


drag and rasp

by deniigiq



Series: Inimitable Verse [23]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Art, Art collaboration, Emotions, Fan Comics, Gen, Hero Complex, POV Outsider, Secret Identity, Social Media, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team Red, Team as Family, as in Ganke is making one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:55:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 33,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26075266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: A big Asian dude with dark hair and dark skin entered the kitchen wearing a sleep shirt with Darth Vader on it. He wrapped both of his hands lovingly around Spidey’s mouth from behind, and Spidey jerked like a live wire before realizing who it was.“Oh hey, friendo,” he said, muffled through hands.“I’m going to skin you,” the big guy said. “I’m going to start by cutting an ‘X’ in your ass and pouring boiling water on you. Then I’m going to skin you. Like a tomato, Peter Parker. Consider yourself ketchup.”Spidey gave no sign of guilt.“Kid’s’re makin’ a comic,” he said.(Ganke is obsessed with comics and there is one particular superhero that resonates with him, but he doesn't have a comic. He ropes Miles into helping him rectify this.)
Relationships: Ganke Lee & Miles Morales, Ganke Lee & Samuel Chung, Matt Murdock & Peter Parker & Wade Wilson, Michelle Jones/Ned Leeds/Peter Parker, Samuel Chung & Matt Murdock, implied Sam Chung/Peter Parker
Series: Inimitable Verse [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1117746
Comments: 282
Kudos: 750





	1. black and white panels

He searched all over, with every term he could find, on every site he knew was likely to host stuff like that, but all he found were fan comics.

This was an affront to man, nay justice.

Blindspot deserved a comic of his own, and if no one else was going to make him one, then Ganke would himself.

There was just one problem with this glorious, glorious plan, born of love, sweat, and passion and the American way.

Ganke couldn’t draw for shit.

He groaned out loud, tipping his head back as far as it would go.

This was _exactly_ why he should have stayed in those art classes Mom put him in in first grade. This moment right here. Just another year or two in that suffocating, pencil-shaving graveyard of a classroom and he wouldn’t be sitting here moaning, he’d be sitting here, fulfilling his destiny and making history like Steve Rogers had all those years ago.

He could have been the Korean-American Steve Rogers.

Minus the war part and the gay part and the part with the plane and the Atlantic and—

Hold up.

What was he moaning about?

Every good comic was a team effort. An art of doubles. The collaboration between a brilliant story-teller and an equally charming, if slightly less handsome, artist.

He snatched his phone off the charger.

It was 2:00am, sure, but Spiderman never slept, and so neither did Miles Morales.

Miles showed interest in doing a collaborative comic. He was mostly interested because it meant that Ganke _had_ to look at all his pictures of naked people now.

The guy was obsessed.

Actually, no.

Captain America was _obsessed_.

Every time Miles went over to his house—which was unfairly often, if Ganke was being real here—he was always telling Miles that he had to ‘learn to understand the human form.’

And smoking.

Miles said that Cap smoked sometimes, too, which Ganke was pretty sure was a sin against God. He was pretty sure that was how Catholics worked.

Miles said that it wasn’t like, a _lot_ of smoking. He claimed Cap only took drags off Sergeant Barnes’s cigarettes when he passed through the studio, but that was still smoking, sir. Mr. America, sir.

It was illegal.

Put it back and apologize.

Comics Cap would never have stood for such tomfoolery and cavalier treatment of his body. And speaking of which, Ganke thought the style of Comics Cap would very much suit Blindspot’s vibe. It was a little messy and splashy, but in a good way. A really good way.

On the other hand, though, the Daredevil comic that someone had published two years ago was also pretty, pretty good style-wise. It was kind of gritty—maybe too gritty, actually. Maybe a mix between the two of them would be good. Something with thin, messy lines and watercolor-y backgrounds.

Maybe everything would be in black and white but like, two colors. One of them had to be red. Obviously. Blood and all that. But the other one, huh.

Everyone had their colors, didn’t they?

Cap had blue and red. All Hawkeye’s stuff was in purple. Ironman’s everything was red and yellow.

Tch.

It wouldn’t work.

BT’s colors were black and white and nothingness.

Ugh.

Alright, alright. Rein it in. Such decisions were never spur of the moment. They required two minds, thinking in sync. Like jaeger pilots.

He and Miles just had to sit and drift.

Miles did the thing he did where he got overexcited about everything and brought anything even tangentially related to the task to school with him in his backpack.

He spread all his R-rated sketchbooks out between him and Ganke during lunch the next day and beamed at him.

“So,” he said. “Gimme it straight.”

“I like your attitude,” Ganke said. “Alright, you ready?”

“I’m ready,” Miles said.

“So,” Ganke started, with the appropriate director’s hand gestures, “Picture this. One day, you’re walking along at night, coming home from getting a soda or something at a corner store. It’s cold. It’s like, August or something.”

“It’s not cold in August,” Miles said.

“Okay, it’s like, February or something,” Ganke said.

“Okay, but like how cold are we talkin’? Like, am I wearing a jacket or—”

“Miles, shut up. You’re buying a sandwich.”

“I thought it was a soda.”

“Miles, shut _up_. You’re buying a soda, okay? And you’re coming home from the store and it’s cold and you got your keys in your— _don’t you start._ You let me finish. Thank you—so you’re walking along and you’re headed home, but you hear something funny going on in the alley. So you think you’re gonna check it out, so you take out your phone and you start walking towards the alley—”

“And then—”

“Miles. This is me-talking time.”

Miles covered his face with his hands and smiled between his fingers while he nodded. Ganke waited until he’d kept a cork in it for five whole seconds before continuing.

“And you’re walking towards the alley and you put your phone to the ear, ready to dial 911, and you peek, peek, peek slowly, slowly around the corner and there, right there, are three guys having the crap beat out of them by _no one_.”

“Oh my god,” Miles squeaked.

“That’s what you say,” Ganke said. “And all of the sudden, the guys all fall down, all totally unconscious. And you look up from them and there is no one. Until all of the sudden, there is. And he’s all dressed in black and white and this skull-shaped mask is like, gazing at you silently. And JUST LIKE THAT, he’s _gone_. Jumping up onto the chainlink fence and from there onto the rooftop and out of sight and you’re left standing there in the streetlight, watching after him to the sound of the groaning of those beat-up guys. End scene.”

“I love it,” Miles said immediately.

Of course he did.

“It sounds like something I saw Spidey do once.”

Wait.

“He told us all to stay back, right?”

No, wait.

“And so we did, and he was all ‘I’ll handle this’ and he went forward and like _stealthed_ into the shadows, right?”

That wasn’t a word, also, hold on.

“And he waited until this dude had stood up from his victim and he got up right here, right next to his ear and he just whispered, ‘did that feel good?’ Miles said, in a perfect, flat Spidey impression. “It was so cool.”

Ganke stared at him. Miles’s grin slowly started to slip.

“No?” he said.

“This isn’t about Spidey. Not everything is about Spidey,” Ganke said.

Miles scoffed.

“Pot, kettle,” he said, gesturing to Ganke, then himself.

“Whatever,” Ganke said. “ _This_ isn’t about Spidey, then.”

Miles quirked an eyebrow at him.

“It’s _not_ ,” Ganke said.

“Who’s it about then?” Miles asked.

And boy, Ganke was glad he had.

“This is about Blindspot,” Ganke said, with a touch of jazz hands. “He’s new on the scene, you probably haven’t heard of him—which is a _shame_ , by the way. A crying shame. He’s so cool—anyways, he’s—why are you making that face?”

Miles recoiled and plastered on the worst Lying Liar face in the whole world.

“What face?” he asked.

Dude.

 _Dude_.

Ganke felt his hands dropping like the feeling in his stomach.

“Do you? Know him?” he asked.

“Who? Blindspot? No, you were just telling me about him,” Miles lied.

“You know him,” Ganke said. Then picked himself back up. “Oh,” he said. “From his twitter. You follow him, too? Man, why didn’t you say something? I’ve been following him for like, almost a year now. Ever since he first made the account. We coulda talked about it, Miles. Come on, man—what’s with that face?”

Miles grimaced and looked away.

The stone returned to Ganke’s stomach. It pulled all the muscles in his belly down.

“Yeah,” Miles said. “Twitter.”

He didn’t want to make the comic anymore.

He was—

He was—

“You met Blindspot?” Ganke asked quietly. “When?”

Miles chewed a lip and glanced back, he sat up straight again and checked around them. Whatever he saw, he didn’t like.

“After school,” he told Ganke in a serious, Spiderman tone. “I’ll explain.”

It figured.

It fucking figured that Miles knew _everyone_ in the whole damn world.

“I don’t understand why you’re mad about this,” Miles said for the fourth time in Ganke’s bedroom.

“ _Because Miles_ ,” Ganke snapped back at him. “You—you. Listen, okay? You know Sam Wilson?”

Miles gave him a face like he was being dumb but said that he did.

“Great, and you know what’s-his-name—the black Spiderguy you hang with? The third guy?” Ganke said.

“Yeah. His name’s _Louis_ , Ganke. He has one, I’ve told you this,” Miles huffed back.

“Fine. Great. Louis, whatever. You know him. Don’t you?” Ganke said.

“Well, obviously I know him,” Miles said.

“Well great. Then it’s like this. It’s like—okay, so Sam Wilson and Louis are to _you_ what Blindspot is to me. Us. Asian people. Okay? So it just kinda sucks that you didn’t even tell me you knew him when _clearly_ he’s a big deal to me. Us. Okay? That’s all I’m sayin’,” Ganke spelled out for his beloved best friend sat on his bed.

Miles sucked on his teeth, processing that. Then he stopped and sighed.

“That sucks,” he said.

Ganke paused.

“It—yeah. Yeah, it does,” he said.

“Sorry, man. I didn’t realize he was that big of a thing,” Miles said.

That—

That was…okay. Yeah. It was okay.

BT wasn’t like, that big anyways—outside of East Asian communities in the area, anyways. It kind of made sense that— _wait just a second here_.

“You’ve met him. For real, for real,” Ganke said.

Miles’s eyes widened slightly like he was being interrogated, probably because he was being interrogated. This was an interrogation now.

“I? Yeah?” Miles said. “He’s on the group chat with the others.”

What.

“He’s DD’s apprentice?” Miles said like a question. “DD’s on the chat? So why wouldn’t he be--?”

No. Shut up. Everyone shut up.

“Blindspot. _The_ Blindspot, is in your phone. Right now. As we speak,” Ganke said as he hurried over and crawled onto the bed next to Miles.

Miles inched away slightly.

“Yes?” he said.

“Make it up to me right here, right now by letting me talk to him,” Ganke demanded.

Miles stared at him, then burst out laughing.

“You wanna talk to BT? That’s all?” he said.

“This is not a game, Miles,” Ganke threatened him. “Remember? Asian Sam Wilson. Asian Spiderman. That’s what we’re talking. People leave shrines out for this guy. They leave offerings for him.”

“He’s not Korean,” Miles pointed out, like Ganke didn’t know anything about anything.

“Yeah, duh,” Ganke scolded him. “Obviously, he’s Chinese. Everything about him is Chinese. But I don’t get on your case for stanning Jamaican folks, do I?”

Miles was slightly cowed. As he should have been.

“Alright, alright,” Miles said. “Dude, back up. I can’t work with you all up in my face. Further. No, further. Alright, like. Man. I don’t know if he’ll answer, he’s probably at work, but I can try? If you want?”

“I want,” Ganke said firmly.

Miles snickered at him.

“Just so you know, he’s kind of grumpy sometimes,” he said. “Specifically towards me. Like. Especially towards me.”

“What did you do?” Ganke asked.

Miles huffed again.

“I don’t know, it’s a thing. It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Just, if he sends back like a million knife emojis, those are for me, not you.”

Oh.

Uh? Cool? Was that cool? That didn’t sound cool.

Miles made him move another foot away from him on the bed, citing the heat and the pressure as reason that he couldn’t text where he was.

Ganke knew that wasn’t the full truth, though. He wasn’t dumb. He’d noticed that Miles had started putting passwords on some of his apps and had started swapping them out for these ones that Ganke had never heard of, which he claimed did the same things as other mainstream ones. Miles didn’t want people knowing how to work through his phone, and he didn’t want Ganke to know which app was the one he and the other Spideys used for their group chat.

When he was done being sneaky and secretive, he leaned back over into Ganke’s space and grabbed at his arm to get his attention. He waved him in closer to the screen.

It was a familiar one.

At the moment it was full of texts from Little Spidey and that weird copycat Daredevil. They seemed to be trying to figure out if laundry sheets were a scam. Both were in favor of this, but neither had any proof of it.

The chat was always full of weird arguments like this. Ganke had thought, at first, that it was a serious business thing, full of coordinates and passcodes and monikers and stuff, but clearly, vigilantes were less professional than that.

“What do you want to say?” Miles asked him.

What did he want to say?

How was he supposed to know?

Wasn’t it like, an age-old thing question: what would you say to your favorite superhero if you ever met them?

“Well, you have to say something,” Miles said. “Or not. Here, I’ll just send him a knife.”

A _what_?

That was not the impression Ganke was trying to lead with here, Miles. That was the opposite impression.

“Too bad,” Miles said. “Sent.”

Oh, god.

**S4:** hey BT. 🔪

_Oh god._

“Why would you do that?” Ganke hissed.

“Because I want his attention?” Miles said.

No. Bad, Morales. Bad communication skills. This interaction would now be tarnished by hate.

Miles lifted an eyebrow at him. His phone chirped. They both looked down at it.

**S2:** eyyyyy look who’s back

 **D2:** oh hey bitsy

 **S4:** hey sup guys

 **S2:** you picking a fight? Kinda early for that, no?

 **S3:** it’s early for everything someone make this day end

 **S2:** you’re gonna make it, louis.

 **D2:** yes

 **S3:** how do you know tho??

 **D2:** a tie can be used as a garotte

 **S3:** Wha????

 **S3:** Dave???

 **S2:** hell yeah

 **S3:** Dave are you okay? Do you need water? A snack? Some fuckin’ chill, man???

 **D2:** no mostly I need more detergent

Ganke could not believe these people. Here he was, awaiting an interaction with one of the most important people in his life, and there they were, trying to kill someone over laundry detergent.

“Miles, these people are not human,” he said.

“Nah, they’re fine. It’s just the Friday afternoon slog,” Miles said. He started typing.

**S4:** does anyone know where BT is?

 **S3:** oh, well it’s 2? I think? Yeah it’s almost 2 for him. So he might be on lunch.

 **S2:** or Red’s got him doing something heinous

 **S3:** or that, yeah

 **S4:** define ‘heinous’

 **DD:** I do not mistreat my employees.

Holy shit. Holy shit.

Daredevil in the building.

Ganke glanced to Miles next to him and found his face impassive.

**S4:** yeah okay sure

 **S4:** can I abuse him pls?

 **DD:** for what cause?

 **S4:** noble one

 **DD:** I require specifics.

“He’s super formal,” Ganke whispered.

“Sort of,” Miles said. “Not so much in person. I think his brain is in work-mode, too.”

It would never not be earth-shaking that Daredevil had and kept a job. Like, according to Miles he was a really professional dude.

That vibe did _not_ match the comics at all. Shame on you, DD.

**S4:** my friend wants to meet him

 **S2:** And my sister wants to meet hello kitty. That’s not a cause.

 **S4:** It is

 **S3:** hey now. Don’t be mean.

 **DD:** Unfortunately, I must side with the small annoying one, Miles. This is not a good cause.

Oof.

Rejected by Daredevil. Well, that was fair. Ganke wasn’t sure that he’d be able to argue—

**BT:** I HAVE CAUSE

DEAR GOD.

“Chill,” Miles said without looking up.

**DD:** this is not cause

 **BT:** NO TEACH

 **BT:** NO. I mean

 **BT:** CAUSE

 **BT:** I found CAUSE

 **DD:** wait you found cause?

 **BT:** I FOUND IT!!

 **DD:** Where are you?

 **BT:** Where I always am

 **DD:** don’t look happy. Don’t celebrate

 **BT:** hhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 **DD:** I know. Play it cool.

 **BT:** HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

 **S2:** I don’t understand what’s happening

 **S3:** lol I do

 **S3:** don’t let em see you BT, or they’ll know they fucked up

 **BT:** HHHHHHHHHHH I’m cool. What are you all talking about? Look how cool I am. I’m like. Pickles. That’s how cool I am.

 **S2:** ASDJFASDFJS

 **S3:** Pick

 **S3:** pickles

 **D2:** cucumber?

 **BT:** FUCK ME them too whatever IM IN THE FRIDGE. I am fermenting. I am so FUCKING cool right now, I am NEARLY ice.

 **S2:** I’m not convinced

 **DD:** me either.

 **DD:** how much more do you have to go through?

 **BT:** I CANT THINK ABOUT THAT RIGHT NOW

 **S2:** confirmed: zero chill. Dave look, a friend for you.

 **D2:** 👋

Wow.

Ganke wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, and he didn’t know why he was surprised, but Blindspot was kind of sweary?

“He’s not always like that,” Miles said. “I get the sense that he’s been doing paperwork for most of the day.”

Paperwork?

What kind of lug made Blindspot do paperwork?

**DD:** page count pls

Ah. That one.

**BT:** uuuuuuuh, 12?

 **DD:** please finish

 **BT:** will do

 **DD:** thank you. See you soon.

 **BT:** eyyyyy 👉👉👉

 **DD:** you are not my husband. I will have no finger guns from you

 **BT:** fine whatever your joke was bad anyways

“He’s _funny_ ,” Ganke told Miles.

Miles lifted his head and wrinkled his forehead at him.

“You didn’t laugh,” he said.

It didn’t matter.

“Catch him before he disappears,” Ganke said.

Miles pushed him back out of his space again and carried on typing.

**S4:** hey BT do you got a sec?

 **BT:** ??

 **BT:** now?

 **S4:** yeah or soon?

 **BT:** uuuuuuuh no. sry. Time sensitive issue. Are you ok?

Miles looked at Ganke. Ganke felt himself flail.

“I dunno,” he blurted out. “If he’s busy, it doesn’t matter. It’s fine.”

Miles’s brow started wrinkling with his other eyebrow’s rise.

“It is,” Ganke said. “Maybe some other time. It’s fine.”

Miles hummed.

**S4:** yeah, I’m okay. Whenever you get a chance to chat, tho, if you could hmu that’d be cool

**BT:** **👍**

**SM:** someone save me my staff just found the Roomba

 **S3:** beg your pardon?

 **S2:** heyyyy spidey. The one you hid yesterday?

 **SM:** this building has been forsaken by god and this lab is what hell wishes it could be

And that was it. Conversation over. Miles turned to Ganke with sympathy in his eyes.

“We can try again tomorrow or later tonight,” he said.

“Yeah,” Ganke said. Disappointment was kind of cold and heavy on his shoulders.

“Come on,” Miles said. “Let’s talk about the comic.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Matt are looking for probable cause for an arrest here, that's what they're getting all jumpy about. They don't want the officers in the evidence room to know that Sam's found something, which is why DD tells him to be chill.


	2. journey to the west

Ganke was surprised that Miles still wanted to work on a comic that he knew the real life person behind. He wasn’t sure if he himself would stay on for a project like that. But Miles had all those sketchbooks and all these markers and he had a thousand questions about styles.

So Ganke figured, what the hell?

He started handing over the volumes from the shelves in his desk.

Miles opened the Captain America one and stared into its guts like it held the secrets of the universe. Then he snapped it shut and accepted the one on Wolverine that Ganke handed him next.

“Wade says that if any of us ever see Wolverine, we’re supposed to take cover and call him immediately,” he said as he paged through it.

“DP doesn’t seem like a guy I would trust in the event of a fire, much less Wolverine,” Ganke said, leaning back to find the man’s comics on his shelf.

They were pretty gruesome. His mom hadn’t been too comfortable letting him buy them.

“He’s a lot more chill than those things say he is,” Miles said. He jerked his chin towards the shelf. “I don’t like any of these.”

None of them?

Ganke rifled through the issues on his desk and handed over the one on the bottom of the stack.

It was the Daredevil one. Miles took it with a scrunched up nose and chewed a nail as he scrutinized it.

“This is better,” he said, “But it’s kind of gritty for BT, you know. He’s a pretty light-hearted dude.”

Yeah, Ganke was seeing that now. He fanned out the remaining issues in his hands and though that they maybe didn’t match so well after all.

“We need to know BT better,” he said.

“Yeah,” Miles hummed. “And we need a story.”

Oh god, the _story_. How had Ganke forgotten? He was supposed to be the handsome one here.

“I thought we’d do something cool from an outsider’s perspective for the first few panels--you know how they always do it. But after that, I wanted him to like, make friends with someone and go fight some evil villain and there’d be a twist where the villain wasn’t a villain, he was just Monkey from _Journey to the West_ , and he was causing chaos and Blindspot would have to trick him into calming down and being nice to people,” he said. “But it sounds like that’s not his vibe after all.”

Miles glanced up from his nest of comics.

“Who’s Monkey?” he asked.

Ganke sighed.

“It’s—you’d—it’s a whole thing,” he said. “Like a super old story in China that kinda spread out to other countries around it. You’d—it’s a cultural thing. He’d know what I was talking about.”

Miles thought about that for a moment, then the corner of his mouth quirked up into a grin.

“Maybe,” he said, “We can surprise him.”

Ganke’s head lifted of its own accord.

“Surprise who, Blindspot?” he asked. “No one surprises Blindspot. He surprises other people.”

Miles snickered.

“Pretty sure stairs surprise Blindspot,” he said. “Doors sometimes, too. You want to know a secret that you can’t tell anyone, ever, cross your heart and hope to die?”

Uh, _duh_.

“BT’s visually impaired,” Miles said.

Ganke frowned.

“What, he’s blind? Are you—” he actually felt his heartrate skyrocket, “Miles Morales, are you telling me that Blindspot is actually blind?”

Miles’s eyebrows did their ‘you are picking up no nuance’ dance. Ganke tried to reel it in but the excitement did not wish it to be so.

“He’s not blind,” Miles said flatly. “He’s visually impaired. “He has low vision, which means he can’t see some stuff and it interferes with his daily life. Like, I’ve seen him use his phone and he’s got everything on it set to max brightness and contrast. Sometimes, he’s gotta hold it way up close to his face. If we do a comic for him, he needs to be able to read it if he wants to.”

Oooh. Now Ganke hadn’t thought about that.

The low vision thing or the brightness thing. Honestly, it all just made BT even cooler.

“So he was making a joke of himself earlier,” he said as Miles started stacking the comics around him. “About DD seeing him later.”

Miles paused.

“Yeah,” he said after a long beat. “They were both making a joke.”

That was cool, too.

“Because DD’s got no light perception.” Miles said.

The record of Ganke’s life scratched.

It scratched _loud_.

“What did you just say?” he whispered.

“Miles, Miles, _Miles_. You can’t just drop a bomb like that,” Ganke said, on the heels of the artist himself.

“I don’t know what else you want me to say,” Miles huffed at him as he climbed the steps to Captain America’s door like it was nothing. No one stopped him, either. No one.

Then again, the place didn’t look like a national icon lived in it, so that was probably part of it.

“Uh, I dunno, maybe _how_ that’s even possible?” Ganke said.

Miles worked his jaw.

“Spidey says he’s got a dolphin brain,” he said. “He’s got echo-location to the max. Now shut up. You’re taking it to the grave, remember? And don’t embarrass me, alright?”

Sure, sure, sure.

Of course.

Them standing on Captain America’s stoop was no big deal. Them standing next to a package addressed to J. Buchanan didn’t mean anything at all. They were not standing mere inches away from national history and—

Miles knocked on the door.

Ganke swallowed hard. It was only a few moments before someone on the other side shuffled around and came to unlock it. And yet still, nothing could have prepared Ganke for Sam Wilson, the Falcon himself, in the flesh.

He was tall. He was tenderly moisturized. A waft of coffee and paint chips blew past him when he opened the blue door with its brassy handle.

He saw Miles. He saw Ganke. Then he looked back at Miles almost immediately.

“Still here for Steve?” he asked in a voice made for belting the national anthem.

Miles beamed at him. Sam Wilson rolled his eyes.

“Just one time,” he said. “Just _one_ time, you’re gonna come for me and that’ll be the day—STEVE,” he roared over his shoulder, “Your protégé’s back.”

He looked back at them. Pointedly the two of them.

“This is my best friend Ganke,” Miles said.

Sam Wilson made a thoughtful face.

They had been here before for an academic practice session, so Ganke wasn’t sideswiped to see the inside of the Captain America residence.

It was a mix between airy, cozy, and empty and there was not a TV screen to be found. Just the old-looking leather couches and walls dripping with little bursts of leaves and vines. There were wooden bookshelves of different colors all crammed full of books stacked all different ways. And there was a record player on a stand with a stack of records tucked in between its legs.

Sam Wilson went around the couch, moving the only screens in the room (a tablet and a phone with the accompanying over-the-ear headphones) from it to the coffee table.

“Can we go up?” Miles asked, pointing at the stairs that Ganke was not familiar with.

“In a minute,” Sam Wilson said. “I don’t know if he’s in there or fighting with folks on twitter again.”

Oh, fun.

“Does he do that a lot?” Ganke asked, even though he already knew the answer.

Cap’s dedication to publicly shaming Congressmen was kind of a known deal. He’d made the news twice this month.

Mr. Wilson knew this and gave Ganke a flat expression.

“I’m calling it an all-consuming passion,” he said.

“Oh, the wains are back.”

Ganke felt himself go stiff at the rasp of that voice. Miles spun around and beamed right at Mr. Barnes and all his heavy-looking hair.

“Hi Sarge,” Miles said. “It’s for art.”

“It’s always for art, isn’t it. Why don’t you ever come by just to see me and this guy, huh?” Mr. Barnes caught Mr. Wilson’s bicep and pulled him in close.

“I don’t like birds,” Miles said cheerfully.

“Boy’s sick,” Mr. Barnes told Mr. Wilson seriously.

“I see it,” Mr. Wilson said.

“Ill. Needs a ward or somethin’.”

“I have told you sixteen times that that is not what we do to children in this century.”

“Oh, Miles.”

Ganke turned around at the new voice and found Cap standing in the middle of the stairs with bare feet and messy hair.

He did not gape because he’d been raised better than that. But he did have to say that The Narrowsmith run had come really, _really_ close to capturing the real image there.

“Hi, Steve! We’re making a comic,” Miles said brightly.

Cap’s studio smelled like paint thinner and freshly cut wood. It was pretty old school. He had two benches in there, shaped in an ‘L,’ and a few stools scattered around under the overhead lights, which he moved around when they got in so that they weren't shining into people’s eyes. Miles went past the benches and the paint-covered easel with its equally paint-covered little table to a tall wooden piece of furniture against the wall by the sink.

It looked like it was a mix between a dish-rack for mason jars and paint brushes and a standing desk.

“Hold on, pal,” Cap said as Miles unzipped his bag.

Ganke almost had a heart attack.

There was _no way_ that Miles thought that he was putting those volumes on that wet countertop. There was _no way_.

Ganke would have to kill him. Right here. In front of Captain American. And then he’d have to escape and buy a Halloween mask out of season, and then he’d have to hired a giant drill to dig his underground lair into existence, and then he’d have to hired a team of henchmen and a find a cat and _surely_ it was better for all of them, Miles, for Ganke not to become the supervillain in this character arc.

Cap put a stop to those homicidal thoughts by grabbing Miles’s collar and redirecting him towards the benches.

“Sit first,” Cap said. “Storytime. Then show and tell.”

Miles laid it all out for Cap and Ganke was almost embarrassed to hear him do it.

It sounded so silly now. Like, Cap didn’t need to be hearing this. He had more important things to do, like be tall and lift weights and smell good and ruin politicians’ lives.

But it was so, so, _so_ cool that he just listened. Ganke swallowed back bitter jealousy at the thought that Miles came here and did this often enough for Cap to know that if he didn’t get the full explanation of why things were happening up front, then he wouldn’t get one at all.

“What’s Monkey?” Cap asked Ganke when Miles was finished explaining.

“Oh,” he said. Captain America was talking to him. Captain _America_ was talking to _him._ “He’s like, uh. He’s kind of like this deity, but not really. He’s a monkey king who studied Buddhism. He kind of became immortal and he’s like this trickster character, but he helps this really important monk who brings these really important Buddhist texts back to China from like, India.”

“He sounds like fun,” Cap said. He smiled. It make his eyes crinkle around the corners. They weren’t as blue as everyone made them out to be.

“He’s a lot of fun,” Ganke said.

“And Blindspot’s going to fight him?” Cap asked.

God, it felt like they were two little kids and Cap was baby-talking them along, didn’t it?

“It’s dumb,” Ganke said. “Sorry. It’s not—”

Cap’s eye-crinkles migrated to his forehead.

“What do you mean?” he said. “I think it sounds great. I don’t know this Blindspot kid, but if he knows this Monkey guy, I bet he’d cry laughing.”

…He would, tho, wouldn’t he?

Like, objectively, the idea of Monkey fighting a guy with invisibility powers _was_ hilarious.

“We need to pick a style,” Miles said, re-unzipping his backpack and spreading Ganke’s comic volumes out all over the bench between him and Cap. “I want to capture his personality.”

One of Cap’s eyebrows jumped.

“A challenge,” he said.

Miles thrust the DD issue at him.

“This but not so edgy,” he said. “I’ve never drawn a comic.”

Cap took the issue and opened it up to the middle. He flipped a few pages.

“This is digital work,” he said.

“Well, I don’t have digital anything,” Miles said. “So I gotta do it old-school. Which is why.” He gestured to Cap.

Cap’s brow dropped.

“I take so much of your shit,” he told Miles.

Miles snickered. Ganke was horrified.

“How do you do a comic, Cap?” Miles asked. “You’re doing one with Sarge, right?”

Say what now?

“Don’t speak of it,” Cap said. “You’ll call him.”

It was too late. There was already thunder out on the stairs and the door of the studio was wrenched open by a metal arm.

Sergeant Barnes loomed with huge eyes and hair all over his shoulders. Cap carried on flipping through the comic without looking up.

“I heard comic,” Sergeant Barnes said seriously.

“I’m not done paneling,” Cap said. “Begone with ye.”

Sergeant Barnes came over and snatched the issue out of his hands. He inserted himself into Cap’s arms and lap and stroked at his face tenderly.

“I have killed for less,” he said.

Cap reached around him and yanked the issue out of his grip and carried on reading it.

“This isn’t really DD’s vibe,” he commented, jerking away from Sergeant Barnes as he tried to regain his attention.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying,” Miles said. “I wanna do something that like, captures BT’s spirit.”

“Oh? What’s he like?” Cap asked. He leaned all the way back and Sergeant Barnes flopped himself flat on his chest.

“Funny,” Miles said, as Ganke tried to figure when everyone had just learned how to ignore a 240 pound human weapon.

“Funny is good,” Cap said. “Sounds like the storyline is humor, too. What’re his colors?”

“Black and white,” Miles said.

“Well that’s convenient,” Cap said. He petted at Sergeant Barnes’s hair and was blown off in disgust. Sergeant Barnes pulled himself together and got up and huffed.

“ _I’m_ going to go write detailed scenes of Alpine dismembering a mouse,” he said. “You go ahead and waste your valuable time writing a novel about Invisi-boy.”

He made to leave but didn’t make it. Cap grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled him back.

“You know this kid?” he asked.

Sergeant Barnes scoffed.

“Do I know this kid—what do I look like, Sergeant Blockhead? Yeah, Steven. I know _everyone_ , remember?” he spat.

Cap was unfazed by his attitude and Ganke wanted his expression printed out on a shirt so that he could wear it to school.

Cap waited. Sergeant Barnes scowled at him.

“Alright, fine, go write Alpine eating your mouse,” Cap said. “I’ll make it a crinkle ball.”

“I hate you,” Sergeant Barnes told him. “You are useless to me.”

“It’s comedic,” Cap said.

“He’s a vicious creature.”

“He _wishes_ he was a vicious creature.”

“I don’t appreciate you undermining this artistic endeavor,” Sergeant Barnes said.

“Bucky, darling. You said you trusted me,” Cap said. “This before us now does not look like trust.”

Sergeant Barnes sneered at him and tore away from his grip. He stormed back out the door and Cap didn’t seem bothered by it.

“So, Blindspot,” he said.

“You guys are writing a comic about a cat?” Miles interrupted.

Cap beamed at him.

“When you see Buck’s narration, you will cry,” he said.

Cap did, in fact, have a screen larger than a tablet in his house. It was a computer that was shaped like Miles’s drafting desk. It lived in an office and it was raised to an angle; he had a stylus that he could use to draw directly on the screen. He showed Miles and Ganke the program that he drew Alpine, the Lion of Crown Heights in.

Alpine, the Lion of Crown Heights was a fluffy white cat with bright blue eyes that went on adventures when his family was at home and school. And Ganke saw the concept of the whole thing now.

He appreciated it wholeheartedly.

Alpine the ragdoll cat simply _thought_ that he was a lion. Sergeant Barnes wrote him as an apex predator and Cap drew him as a household terror.

And that was, Ganke had to say, _hilarious._

“This is exactly like BT,” Miles giggled.

“Is it?” Cap asked.

“It is. He’s super, super, _super_ dramatic,” Miles said. “Kinda like Spidey, but less jaded.”

Cap’s cheeks had to hurt with all that smiling.

“That’s a really good start,” he said. “The more you figure out what kind of energy you want, the better. Here, let’s do this. I’ll show you how to storyboard, then you two will go off and think about style and story. Is that fair?”

“That’s fair,” Miles said. He looked at Ganke and then nudged him hard and Ganke remembered that he was supposed to like, speak when spoken to.

“That’s fair,” he said.

“Perfect,” Cap said. “Come in here, these are the first panels I drew.” 

The crash-course in comic development was really helpful actually. As was the feeling that came with Cap taking them seriously.

It felt like Ganke was trying to trap a balloon in his arms.

A little giddy, maybe.

“We need to figure out more about BT,” Miles told him on the way home. “Red’ll know. They live together.”

They did what now?

“Yeah,” Miles said. “And if we call instead of text, Red’ll probably be down to keep it a surprise and stuff.”

Amazing. That—

Ganke had never imagined this project having so much super-support.

“Can you maybe write out the story tonight?” Miles asked. “Like maybe an outline of everything that happens so that we can divide it up into sections? After we talk to Red and get a feel for Comics-BT’s character, we can start writing in the first section. I’ll look through more of these and do some sketches.” He pointed at his backpack and the comics inside.

“Don’t wrinkle them,” Ganke told him.

Miles rolled his eyes.

“Or fold them,” Ganke said. “No dog-earing, you hear me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I mean it.”

“ _Uh-huh._ ”

He got home, dumped his backpack off by the door, took off his shoes, and went to go collapse on his bed.

His heart was still pounding a little.

He couldn’t stop smiling.

He was too excited to wait. He scrambled off his bed and hurried over to his desk and brought up a blank document on his computer. When Mom came in later and asked him to come to eat, he pleaded to stay in his room.

He was rejected, so had to go and wolf down dinner so that he didn’t lose momentum. Mom did not approve. But she didn’t know what was afoot and she didn’t need to until it was done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ganke is referring to the story _Journey to the West_ in this piece. 
> 
> You can read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West 
> 
> You can read more about Monkey (Monkey King/Sun Wukong) here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_King


	3. wooing the willful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miles hummed. 
> 
> “I just can’t get his suit down,” he said. “I can’t find a good picture of it.”

He woke up to his phone blaring in it his ear and his neck was stiff when he sat up properly in his chair and rubbed at it.

Miles was calling him.

He checked the time.

It was 9:32 am.

Man. He hadn’t fallen asleep as his desk before. It felt very official. Very protagonist-y.

“Sup, man?” he asked into the phone.

“I have stuff,” Miles said. “Can you come around in an hour?”

Miles had done some sketches. A lot of them, actually. All with different silhouettes. He spread them out across his desk amid the various markers and pencils and erasers.

“These look so good,” Ganke said, scanning the whole lot.

Miles’s grin could be seen from space.

“I asked Cap to send me some of the Alpine panels and I mixed them with the DD comic stuff,” he said. “They’re a little messy.”

“I like how messy they are,” Ganke said. “It makes it cool.”

Miles hummed.

“I just can’t get his suit down,” he said. “I can’t find a good picture of it.”

Huh.

“I think I saw some on twitter once?” Ganke said.

Miles shook his head with closed eyes.

“They’re blurry,” he said. “Really dark. I tried to blow one up and change the colors, but it wasn’t happening.”

Well that sucked.

“These are probably fine,” Ganke said, picking out one of the sheets of paper.

BT was a little spindly on it, stretched out and gangly. His mask was pointy and its eyes were way, way bigger than they were on the real thing, but Ganke kind of liked it that way. It was more expressive.

Miles blew out breath and made him look up.

Hello, Grumpy Cat. Go on, what gives?

“I can’t just design BT’s suit, Ganke,” Miles huffed. “He’s already designed it. That’s like asking me to draw Spidey in a blue suit just ‘cause.”

…Okay, but like, a blue and white suit would be cool as hell, wouldn’t it?

“ _Ganke_.”

Alright, alright. Fine. Have it your way, Mr. Artiste.

“I don’t know how to get you a reference beyond Google, though. Can you just ask him for one?” Ganke tried.

“He’s not on the chat, it’s like, seven am where he is, not to mention that if I do, he’ll get suspicious right away,” Miles said.

“Okay, so ask Sergeant Barnes to Winter-Soldier one up for you,” Ganke offered.

Miles did a great impression of Sergeant Barnes’s angry raccoon face.

“I dunno what else to tell you, man, does Spidey have a pic?” Ganke asked.

Miles’s spine snapped straight and his eyes locked onto Ganke’s like the weird cat that he truly was under all that spandex.

**MM:** hey peter can I ask you for a favor?

Miles was hot and cold about Spidey. He couldn’t ever seem to decide if he liked or hated him, which was _bonkers_ of him, in Ganke’s very right opinion.

Spidey was hands-down the most interesting person Ganke had met in his entire life. He had it all: science-brain, fancy job, super-model girlfriend, the respect of 70% of New York City—the whole shebang.

Spidey saved the day every day. He was unbeatable. And humble. And hilarious. What wasn’t there to like?

Well, no that was a lie. There was one thing about him that Ganke sided with Miles on.

Like, Spidey was a rockstar, obviously, and Ganke would do anything to be him for a single day, but man, he was _weird._

“—And so I was like, there’s no room for the Roomba, but they were like, ‘literally go burn in hell,’ so I said, ‘Oh, you want hell, do you? I’ll give you hell, watch this’—”

How he kept a job was beyond Ganke.

“—and then _she_ said, ‘I want your resignation letter by three.’—”

Actually, how Miles got any useful information out of him at all was beyond Ganke. As far as he could tell, Spidey’s brain operated about 57% faster than normal people’s and he was in the 99th percentile of effective brain to mouth filtering skills.

“—joke was on her, though. I’ve had a resignation letter on me at all times since February. So I whipped that puppy out—”

Miles pressed a fist to his mouth and looked longingly at Spidey’s bedroom door, desperate like Ganke was, for someone who’d already heard and digested this work drama to come through it and cut Spidey off before they really started to get into the details about his new director.

And as if summoned by god, someone did.

A big Asian dude with dark hair and dark skin entered the kitchen wearing a sleep shirt with Darth Vader on it. Purpose shown in his eyes. He came up behind Spidey and wrapped both of his hands lovingly around his mouth, and Spidey jerked like a live wire before realizing who it was.

“Oh hey, friendo,” he said, muffled through hands.

“I’m going to skin you,” the big guy said. “I’m going to start by cutting an ‘X’ in your ass and pouring boiling water on you. Then I’m going to skin you. Like a tomato, Peter Parker. Consider yourself ketchup.”

Spidey gave no sign of guilt.

“Kid’s’re makin’ a comic,” he said.

The big guy quirked an eyebrow and took his hands away.

“A what?” he asked.

“Comic,” Spidey said. Then paused. “Oh shit. Ganke, my bad. You met MJ; this is Ned. He’s my other partner.”

 _Other_ partner?

Miles stomped on his foot.

“N-nice to meet you,” Ganke said. He offered a hand. Ned looked at it funnily and then took it and shook it.

“Nice to meet you, too,” he said. “One of the Acadec kids?”

“Miles’s bff,” Spidey said. “They’re makin’ a comic about Blindspot.”

Ned went stiff with surprise and looked from Spidey back to Miles and Ganke.

“Does BT know you’re making a comic about him?” he asked.

“Negative,” Spidey said. “It’s a surprise.”

Ned squinted at Ganke like he was rifling through the cabinets of his brain for a scale to weigh his intentions on.

“I just really admire him?” Ganke squeaked.

The scale was put away. Ned’s shoulders relaxed.

“Ah,” he said. “Yeah, my folks do too.”

Spidey and Miles did a double take. Ned snorted at them.

“Y’all haven’t seen the Blindspot shrines?” he asked.

Spidey threw up his hands and evacuated the kitchen without putting them down. He came back shortly with his phone, typing away on it furiously.

“I don’t know what this means,” he told his phone seriously.

Ned laughed.

“It’s just a way of honoring someone,” he said. “It’s mainly for spirits and stuff. A lot of folks like to think of BT as a friendly ghost.”

“Oh, aw,” Spidey said. “Do you think he knows about them?”

“Probably, people say that the offerings disappear sometimes,” Ned said. “My auntie asked her friend to help her write a message for him in Mandarin to leave at one of them. It was pretty cute. I think he grabbed one of the cousins when they ran into the street or something.”

Spidey cycled through a series of complex emotions at the speed of light, then glued himself to his phone, frantically tapping now. Ned chuckled at him.

“He’s not going to answer you, Peter,” he said. “It’s Saturday. There’s no way any self-respecting human is waking up before 11 on a weekend.”

The phone chirped in Spidey’s hands, and he gave Ned a smug smirk.

“Dude,” Ned deadpanned.

“It’s not his fault, I have this affect on people,” Spidey said smugly back.

“Uh-huh,” Ned said. “Yeah, that’s what it is. It’s definitely not that he knows you’ll text him forty times until you get an answer.”

“He says he doesn’t take the food, but he does read the messages that he gets from the shrines,” Spidey reported as though Ned hadn’t said anything at all. “He also told me to fuck off and die.”

Ned laughed.

“I love this guy,” Ned said. “Bring him home.”

“I can’t, I need to feed him more ham first,” Spidey said.

“Well, go buy more ham then,” Ned said.

“I can’t just buy more ham, Ned. It’s about technique,” Spidey argued. “I must woo him with charm, wit, _and_ ham. And once he’s comfortable, we can do the ‘pspspsps’s and he will come longingly to these arms.”

Ned dead-eyed him.

“I got no ham or ‘pspspsps’s,” he said.

“That sounds like a you-problem,” Spidey huffed.

“I’m putting in a request,” Ned said.

“Request rejected. Gimme your resignation letter.”

“Oh, sorry, you appear to have mistaken me for someone _weak_. I’ll get my ham. And my ‘pspspsps’s. You just wait, Parker.”

“Did I hear ham?”

Ganke looked up and then away violently.

No one was allowed to look at Michelle Jones until she was ready to be seen, and she was not ready to be seen.

“Oh, kids,” she said. “Word. Pants then. One sec.”

The older guys didn’t so much as flinch in the awkward minute or so it took her to leave the living room for the bedroom and come back wearing what were _clearly_ Spidey’s maroon gym pants.

“Ham,” she said, holding out a hand.

“Fresh out,” Spidey said.

“Peter’s trying to woo another one,” Ned reported.

“Another? I thought you and _Johnny_ were talking,” MJ drawled.

Spidey was offended.

“Johnny and I talked yesterday, you were there,” he said.

Michelle parted her men with the wave of her hand and approached Spidey’s coffee maker like a queen on her way to her throne.

“Are you going to see him?” she asked.

“The kids are making a comic,” Ned said.

“Who, Johnny? Yeah, but first I need one of them insecticide sprayer things,” Spidey said. “Need to make a circle ‘round me that he can’t cross.”

Michelle hummed approvingly.

“What do you guys need for your comic?” Ned asked Miles and Ganke.

The whiplash of returning to the plot was disorienting. Miles nudged Ganke to speak for them.

“Uh. Well, mostly right now we need a picture of his suit,” Ganke said. “There aren’t really any good ones on—”

“ _OH??_ Suit you say???”

Ganke needed Spidey to take about three steps back. He did not get the memo. Ned grabbed the back of his shirt and helped him out there.

“Are you trying to draw it?” Ned asked Miles.

Miles nodded bouncily. He received Spidey’s complete and undivided attention.

“I can do that,” Spidey said.

Michelle took a loud and skeptical drink of coffee. Spidey wriggled out of Ned’s grip to stick a finger in her face.

“Mark these words,” he said.

Michelle took another, equally loud, equally skeptical drink. She took her time in lowering the mug and setting it onto the countertop. She reached up and wrapped her own fingers around Spidey’s.

“One problem,” she said sweetly.

“No problems,” Spidey said.

“One problem,” Michelle repeated.

“There are none,” Spidey maintained.

“What happens when Matt finds out you’re flirting with his apprentice?” Michelle asked.

Spidey went still.

“What?” he said.

Ned rolled his head and landed it in his palm. Michelle smirked and adjusted her grip on her mug.

“I’m just saying,” she said. “It’s one thing to get involved with Johnny, right? He’s easy-come, easy-go. You guys have been in Flirt since forever. But Sam’s different, isn’t he? He and Matt have that father-son thing going on, don’t they?”

Spidey’s face became a blue screen of death for about five whole second. Then, out of nowhere, he leaned over and snatched Michelle’s mug.

“Watch me care,” he said.

**SM:** hey bt? Can you send me a selfie?

 **BT:** ??

 **BT:** did we just talk? Or did I hallucinate that?

 **S2:** its too early for a selfie, man. no one’s hair has dried yet

 **BT:** mmmnyes agreed

 **BT:** ttyl

 **SM:** but I neeeeeeeed it

 **SM:** please?

 **BT:** what?

 **SM:** I need it

 **BT:** Y

 **SM:** Y for yes?

 **DD:** please I am begging you to shut up for another 20 minutes

Spidey huffed at his phone. He turned around and pressed the small of his back into his kitchen counter and crossed one of his huge, freakin’ hulked-out legs over the other.

Ganke had to say, Lee Baker had at least gotten that right about him, even if everything else about issue 18 sucked voluminous ass.

Miles leaned in a little closer to that Ganke could see Spidey’s response.

**SM:** go away old man you’re cramping my style

 **DD:** oh? I’m cramping your style am I?

 **S2:** woah thems fightin words at 8am spidey

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : !

 **DD:** take your foul mood far from here, parker

 **SM:** okay whatever sure I’m not talking to you

 **S2:** damn dude. what crawled up your ass and died?

 **BT:** is smth wrong?

 **SM:** no of course not

 **SM:** I just need a BT selfie that’s all ❤ Pref in your suit?

 **BT:** for what?

 **S2:** wants to compare asses

 **SM:** you’re dismissed

 **S2:** nah

 **BT:** I am not dressed rn

 **SM:** even better 😘

 **BT:** 😋

 **DD:** you two are salt to these wounds

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : ooooh are you guys sexting now?

 **SM:** WHAT

 **BT:** yes

 **SM:** WHAT

 **BT:** you want in on this Wade?

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : no thank you ❤❤❤

 **DD:** God grant me strength and patience

 **SM:** okay but is that a yes then, BT? To the suit selfie?

 **BT:** ah see that would involve having to get up, so I’m gonna go with no

 **SM:** I’ll make it worth your while

 **S2:** DAAAAAADS, Spidey’s talking about DICKS

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : for shame

 **DD:** for shame

 **D2:** for shame

 **SM:** fuck off, would you? I didn’t ask for a peanut gallery

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : what do you really need a selfie for, hm Webs?

 **SM:** nothing. Why?

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : oh really? **😏**

 **SM:** what is the meaning of this face?

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : 😏😏😏😏😏😏 you know what it is

Ganke looked up to see Spidey’s jaw on the verge of cracking with how hard he was suddenly clenching it. Ned and Michelle had taken up stations on each side of him, both with calming palms.

**SM:** What are you suggesting, Wade? Did you have something you wanted to say?

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : little old me? Not a damn thing, Websy-boy ❤❤

 **SM:** great. mind your own business then

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : oh I will. And I’ll mind yours while I’m at it.

“Peter,” Ned said soothingly. “This is a fun activity, remember? We are helping these guys here have _fun_.”

Spidey flicked his eyes up and stared deep, deep into Ned’s soul. Ned met them head-on to his credit, but Ganke could tell that he was about to lose this battle.

What was a man in the face of a typhoon?

“You just wait,” Spidey said.

Spidey was on a mission now. A mission to—and Ganke could not believe he was thinking these words together in the same sentence--but the man was on a mission to flirt.

Miles was embarrassed out of his mind as Spidey read each and every one of the texts he sent BT out loud to Ned and Michelle.

“I sent him ‘it can be an old selfie, it doesn’t have to be anything recent. I don’t mind having multiple pictures of you,’” he said.

“And?” Michelle asked.

Spidey waited a moment.

“He says that he doesn’t like how round his face is in any of his other selfies,” he huffed.

“Tell him that his round face is cute,” Michelle said.

Ned shook his head at her as he was apparently the only one of the three of them who remembered that she’d been poking holes in this whole ordeal from the start.

“He says that that I’m a smooth, lying, biased bastard,” Spidey reported a minute later. Michelle moved from the arm of the couch into his lap and took his phone from him.

She started texting.

“What? Girl, no. That’s for Johnny. I’m saving that for Johnny,” Spidey said, taking his phone back.

“Listen, Parker,” Michelle snapped at him seriously. “Johnny already has a secret scrapbook filled with nothing but your face, okay? Anyone with eyes knows this. This guy, on the other hand, is _work_.”

“You don’t even like him,” Spidey sniffed and relinquished his phone.

Michelle jerked back from Spidey with a sour face.

“I didn’t say that,” she said.

“Yeah, you did. You were all ‘oh, Matt’s gonna freak,’” Spidey said with hand gestures that Ganke was 99% sure he’d seen in a movie where the hero got his ass kicked by his spy girlfriend two seconds later.

Was this foreshadowing?

It felt like foreshadowing.

“And? What does that have to do with me liking him? You said that Matt doesn’t matter to you. If that doesn’t matter to you, then it doesn’t matter to me. And if it doesn’t matter to either of us, who does it matter to?” Michelle laid out.

Both she and Spidey turned in tandem to stare at Ned. Ned put his chin in his hand.

“I have no opinion on this,” he said.

Ganke edged closer to Miles in horror as the others removed themselves from their side of the couch and deposited their combined weight on Ned’s thighs. He was a big guy, sure. But that _had_ to hurt.

The noise he made said it hurt.

“I’m sending it,” Michelle said once she was comfortable.

“No, don’t,” Spidey said. “If you gonna—hold on. My ass looks weird. I’ve got a better ass pic.”

Ganke sought out Miles’s face for emotional support here, but Miles was just as mortified as he was. They couldn’t even help each other. Nor could they stop this ride they’d accidentally gotten on.

“We should never have come,” Miles whispered behind a hand into Ganke’s ear.

“Oh my god, MJ. Not—what you are _doing_ to me?”

“Shut up.”

“Don’t filter—no, not—what the fuck? You’re killin’ me, smalls.”

“What part of ‘shut up’ is hard for you?”

“All of it--No, don’t—not blue. It’s already plenty blue—Ned, do you see this?”

Ned lifted an eyebrow at the screen through Michelle’s hair and rubbed his lips together. Spidey gawked in offensive at his little shrug.

“Traitor,” he whispered.

“And _sent._ And…we’re typing….and we’re typing…Aha. Read it and weep, pretty boy,” Michelle declared. triumphantly, shoving the phone into Spidey’s hands.

Spidey’s lips made a perfect upside-down ‘u’. He looked like an emoji. He emoji-ed at his phone while his eyes flicked back and forth through the messages coming in.

“You’re a witch,” he said without looking up.

“ _I’m_ a witch,” Michelle scoffed. She stood up and straightened herself up. “Now if you losers don’t mind, I have better things to do than to woo vigilantes with their own behinds.”

She abandoned them all for Spidey’s bedroom and shut the door behind her.

Spidey pouted after her. Ned petted his hair and peeked over his shoulder at the phone. Both his eyebrows shot up.

“Oh,” he said.

Spidey rounded on him in the blink of an eye.

“Oh?” he said.

Ned reached around him to swipe through whatever Blindspot had sent in his reply.

“Hm.”

Spidey transformed from irritable spider to Cheshire cat in an instant.

“Ned,” he said. “Ned, Ned, _Nedley_ , what are you thinking? Come on, now. Tell me everything. Give me the play by play.”

Ned took his phone and squinted at the screen as he swiped a finger back and forth across it.

“I like the second one,” he said. “You can’t see too much in either of them, though.”

Spidey went stiff, then collapsed back against Ned’s shoulder and sighed.

“I present my ass and all I get in return are headshots; it should be the title of my autobiography,” he said.

Ned chewed on that for a moment and then patted twice at Spidey’s cheek.

“Peter,” he said. “I got this. Take off your shirt.”

Miles plead the fifth when Ganke demanded to know what the hell had happened back there.

“I think?” Miles finally said after some serious Mom-level nagging, “I _think_ —don’t quote me on this. Absolutely don’t quote me on this—but I think that _maybe_ Spidey wants to bang BT.”

Ganke stopped walking and grabbed Miles before he got too far ahead. He made him look him in the face.

Miles did not want to.

“No,” Ganke said. “I need to know if you honestly think that that was any kind of subtle back there.”

Miles yanked his arm out of Ganke’s and determinedly strode forward.

“I don’t know, man. I don’t know anything about polyamorous people,” he claimed.

Lies. All of them. Ganke knew it. This was the second group of polyamorous people Miles had introduced him to that _week_.

“Are they trying to like, mass-flirt with BT or something? How does that even work?” he asked.

“I hear no evil,” Miles said. “Lalalalalala.”

Stop playing, Morales. They both knew he was just as intrigued.

“I HEAR NO EVIL.”

Fine, be that way, Mr. High and Mighty. At least they had a reference now. Sort of.

It was weird. Blindspot had obviously taken the pic as a joke in response to Spidey’s absurd flexing. He seemed to have fallen back onto his bed or something, since he was surrounded by what looked like a navy quilted comforter.

Even though the lighting of the image was strange, it was clear enough to see that his suit was black and white with patches of stripes on his arms and legs. It was fairly tight, especially around the middle of his thighs, but it didn’t show off a nipped waist or any flexing arms. It was long-sleeved, topped with gloves, and presumably boots, but BT wasn’t a heathen and hadn’t put those on while he was in bed.

Ganke kept getting stuck on the fact that he’d painted his toenails black.

Like.

 _Why_? Did he paint his fingernails, too? Was this a ‘fuck you’ to someone? Or did he just like the way it looked? Could he see them better with them painted black? Was this a visually-impaired thing?

Miles told him that if he said the word ‘toes’ one more time he was gonna sock him and he wasn’t going to feel bad about it. Ganke let him have this one. But only this one.

They had designs to discuss.

It was hard to tell where exactly BT fell on the Hulk-o-meter. He didn’t have the bulging muscles of Cap or Wolverine or DD. He seemed kind of small compared to all of them, actually. A little—not soft-looking--but kind of rounded.

‘Young’ was maybe the word that Ganke was looking for.

Hm.

The mask wasn’t attractive at all. It was cool, but there was no chance in hell that it would be drawing in the ladies any time soon.

“He’s got no sex appeal,” Ganke complained.

Miles choked on spit and told him to never speak that word in relation to any of his teammates ever again.

Ganke looked him in the eye.

“He’s got no sex appeal,” he repeated. Miles clutched at his head. He deserved it. “When you draw him, you have to make him sexier.”

Miles, the dramatic-ass, made the sign of the cross over himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen, y'all. I had Sam/Peter thoughts once and now I'm ruined forever. this is just how it's gonna be.


	4. are ya treadin' kid?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He scoured Youtube and Twitter for hints of BT’s personal life. Was it stalkerish? Probably. Was Ganke dwelling on it? No.

Miles was good. Locked and loaded—that is, locked in his bedroom and arguing through the door with his mom in Spanish every time she came by to lament the fact that he was still in there. Ganke felt for him. Not that much, though. He had a story to write.

He needed a backstory for BT.

Everyone had a backstory. Cap’s backstory was plastered all over the walls of the Smithsonian. Wolverine’s backstory was a murky swamp of contention all over a series of rapidly created then deleted online forums. DD’s backstory was a bunch of rumors that Twitter argued about day in and day out.

And that was fine and well for them, but Ganke had to get this backstory _right_.

Leonardo and Schiff hadn’t gotten their backstory right, and now they had to live with Deadpool seeking them out in all the hipster bars in the city and holding them at gunpoint until they agreed to put asterisks all over the pages of their work with his corrections of their ‘animalistic hubris.’ He wasn’t the only guy who was known to get snippy with his writers, either. Doctor Bruce Banner was rumored to have submitted corrections to one of his writers, too. His complaint wasn’t anything to do with the Hulk, though; apparently he’d been agitated that they’d misnamed one of his doctorates and hadn’t been able to sleep thinking that someone out there thought he had a PhD in Astrophysics when really it was in Radiophysics.

Or so people said anyways.

Tony Stark refused to confirm or deny the rumors on Twitter, but he did say that his writers could start calling him ‘Dr. Stark’ any day now, which was as good as a wink and a nudge.

Ganke was going to avoid this trap. He was going to write the best backstory ever. The _best_. BT wouldn’t be able to find a single complaint.

He scoured Youtube and Twitter for hints of BT’s personal life. Was it stalkerish? Probably. Was Ganke dwelling on it? No.

There was a whole forum of BT fans speculating on his tragic beginnings. They pointed out that BT had mentioned in his AMA that he was born in China—Fuzhou, specifically, which Google Maps said was a coastal city. A handful of folks with family from Fuzhou confirmed that he spoke with the right accent for it. Another group of people claimed that, in a short video he’d done entirely in Chinese, he’d told one of DD’s dogs that she had ‘youngest sibling’ energy, which led people to believe that he wasn’t an only child.

Ganke put all that information into a document, turned and looked at the page and nearly wept at the fact that he had exactly two lines of info after a whole hour of searching.

BT had this whole secret identity thing on lockdown.

Ganke decided to change tact.

Blindspot had a much bigger presence in Chinese fandom spaces. He did about half of his videos in Mandarin and regularly tweeted in it. There were a few fans who translated everything on that side of things for everyone else, but they pointed out often that some of the humor was lost in translation.

BT was a big fan of puns, for example.

That said, going into the Chinese things and turning on the subtitles and running through the replies actually yielded some useful stuff. For example, he found a video that looked just like a blur of lights back and forth with BT singing some kind of song behind it, and all the comments were just crying laughy faces and characters.

About halfway down the third page was a longer comment written in Korean. It looked like it was maybe a translation. Excitement was quickly followed by frustration as the only words Ganke could make out were ‘mom’ and ‘house.’

He huffed.

This was what aunts were for.

Auntie was in the kitchen, talking to herself and doing a little dance for the granola she was mixing. Ganke didn’t mean to give her the heart-attack that he did when he asked her if she had a minute.

“ _Imo_ ,” he said. “Can you read something for me?”

Auntie hugged her bowl of granola to her chest. Ganke raised an eyebrow at her. She caught herself and set the bowl back on the counter and cleared her throat.

“Perhaps,” she said stiffly.

Auntie translated the comment as “*to the tune of Singing in the Rain* I’m haunted by my mom🎶 Just haunted by my mom 🎶 She’s mad that I left🎶 The air conditioner on🎶 I’m sorry, Mom. 🎶 It’s not even your apartment🎶I don’t know the rest of the words. Don’t @ me, don’t comment 🎶’

She laughed hard enough to have to wipe tears from her eyes.

“Who’s this from?” she asked.

Ganke grinned at her.

Auntie was very impressed with the project. She flipped through Ganke’s plot summary and smiled the whole time. Ganke tried not to look as proud as he felt.

“Miles is gonna do the art,” he said. “He’s gonna do some panels when I finish the first part, but I’ve gotta come up with a backstory.”

Auntie’s grin loosened a little.

“He doesn’t have one?”s he asked.

“Not like Spiderman,” Ganke sighed. “I have to make one. I’ve been trying to read up on it but there are loads of racists online saying things, and I dunno. I just don’t want to read through all the stuff, I guess.”

Auntie’s eyebrows did a juggling act and she looked back to the summary in her hands. Then she smiled again.

Auntie went and got a piece of paper from the printer and a pen from the soft case she kept for them in her room.

“Let’s work outward,” she said. “Let’s think about what we know about him.”

Alright, well. That was easy enough.

  1. Chinese, from Fuzhou.
  2. Has sibling
  3. Speaks Mandarin
  4. Mom is dead.



“Now what?” he asked.

“Now, we start playing Dr. Frankenstein,” Auntie said. “He needs a name. What is a good name for Blindspot?”

Something Chinese?

Auntie waved at the computer.

“Go on,” she said. “Google. Research is good for you.”

> Guotin Wei immigrated from Fuzhou when he was four years old. He's a silly kid. Super happy-go-lucky even though his dad died when he was a little. His mom moves him and his little brother to the US for a new job that she got. Guotin doesn't want to move, though.
> 
> When he gets to the US he refuses to even try to like it and begs his mom to let him go back to live in China, but she says no. So he sucks it up and settles in and tries to find something to keep himself occupied.
> 
> Over time, he starts to get used to Chinatown and he makes friends at school and grows up to be this straight A student. When he gets to be around 17, his little brother starts to come home all beat up and stuff, and he realizes that he's getting bullied. To help his brother learn to fight back, Guotin signs them both up for karate classes and he realizes there that he’s really good at that kind of thing, so after a few years and his brother dropping out, he stays on and starts working his way up to a black belt.
> 
> On the way home from class one night, he catches a guy threatening a lady with a gun and jumps in and saves her. He realizes then that he can make a difference in the world by helping people like his little brother. He starts going out at night to fight crime when his mom and brother are asleep. After he graduates highschool, he starts working and that kind of fades off for a bit. But then his mom gets killed by a hit and run, and he’s left taking care of himself and his little brother all on his own.
> 
> He gets mad and he starts going out at night and fighting people again, and after a while, his little brother catches on and notices that he’s always hurt. He finds out about Blindspot and sits at the table when BT refuses to stop and thinks really, really hard.
> 
> Then he says that it would be easier for both of them if BT didn’t get hurt as often and he wouldn’t get hurt as often if no one knew where to aim.
> 
> So the little brother makes and invisibility suit and they’re a two-man team.

Auntie beamed at him as he read the final draft outloud.

“Brothers saving the day,” she cheered. “Like in Fullmetal Alchemist.”

It was pretty good, she was right.

“Thanks, _Imo_ ,” he said.

“I want to read it when you’re done,” Auntie said.

Guotin was kind of a badass, just like BT deserved. Ganke worked out a script for him introducing himself. He stopped halfway through and trashed that one. He started again.

Then again.

Then again?

He stared into the center of his document and groaned into his hands.

**GL:** Milessssss

 **MM:** sup?

 **GL:** I don’t know how to write the first chapterrrrrrr

 **MM:** oh

 **MM:** well? How do other people start the first chapter?

 **GL:** you’re a genius thank you

 **MM:** screenshotted for future use

Covering his bed with first issues was maybe a little overkill, but whatever. It felt right. Spidey’s fridge was covered in post-it notes, clearly this was a tactic that vigilantes themselves used.

Ganke opened the books to the first page all at the same time and was met with the same phrases all over.

“My name is Steve Rogers.”

“I’m Clint Barton—AKA the handsomest man alive, AKA Hawkeye.”

“Ironman.”

“I am the Human Torch.”

“My name is Friendly. Well, that’s my first name. My middle name’s Neighborhood if you were to believe the guy on the corner of Penn Station.”

It was all the same. The first line would have to be the same and that was easy enough. He tucked his ankle under his knee in his desk chair and leaned forward to start typing.

> * * *
> 
> It’s raining on top of a bunch of trashcans. There is a splash as a boot hits the top of them and jumps up a brick wall.
> 
> **GUOTIN:**
> 
> My name is Guotin Wei. But you don’t have to call me that, only my mother calls me that.
> 
> GUOTIN runs across the top of a roof through a bunch of soaking wet clothes hanging from lines. He’s running fast. As he approaches the edge of the building, he pulls out a staff and jumps off it.
> 
> **GUOTIN:**
> 
> Everyone else calls me Blindspot.
> 
> There is a shot looking up at GUOTIN as he falls towards the ground with his staff held over his head. Then there is a panel looking down into the faces of a bunch of guys trying to rob a lady.
> 
> **GUOTIN:**
> 
> If they can catch me, that is. If they can even see me.
> 
> The robbers follow GUOTIN’s shadow as it falls down into the alley, but it disappears into the dark and there is no one standing where he should have fallen.
> 
> **GUOTIN:**
> 
> Most of them can’t.
> 
> GUOTIN starts fighting the robbers. He knocks them all out and the lady being robbed is left standing by herself.
> 
> **LADY:**
> 
> Hello?
> 
> No one answers her. She looks around and then her phone rings. She picks up her bag in a hurry and answer it while running away, talking to her friend. There is a shot of an empty alley with the robbers still laying around in heaps while unconscious.
> 
> **GUOTIN:**
> 
> It’s kind of my thing.
> 
> * * *

It didn’t feel like much, but everyone online kept saying that a few lines for a writer was like, a crapload of work for an artist and he didn’t want Miles to start whining until they were at _least_ halfway through this whole project.

He saved the document and opened up a message on his computer.

Miles had a lot of feelings about the scene, he told Ganke during Math the next day. Most of it was positive. The rest of it was Miles complaining about having to draw a lot of backgrounds, which Ganke decided was worthy of being ignored.

He told Miles that he gave him like, four whole people to draw in the second half of the chapter. Miles emphasized to him after ducking away from Mrs. Felton’s evil, sweeping gaze, that he wasn’t in this to draw NPCs. He wanted to draw _Blindspot_.

Ganke didn’t know how to explain to him that A) NPCs were an entirely different genre of people, _Miles_ and B) the right word was ‘supporting characters,’ man, and C) comics were about _groups_ of people and backgrounds. Comics weren’t just people floating in space saying catchphrases—God, have you read even a single comic, Miles?

Miles turned abruptly away from him and Ganke gasped so loud that the kids around him all looked their way. Miles waved them off with his handsome-popular-spider-kid powers and gave Ganke stank-eye over his shoulder.

“You haven’t read them?” Ganke hissed.

“I looked through them with you just the other day,” he said.

That was _it?_

Miles’s eye twitched in irritation.

“I’ve read a comic strip before, Ganke,” he said nastily.

 _No_. This was different. This was way, way, _way_ , different.

“Miles, you have to read comics before you can write comics,” Ganke said. “We need to fix this. You’re gonna do some weird artsy shit. You’re gonna make us an Indie comic. We don’t have that kind of clout, yet, man. We’ve gotta go classic.”

“Classic is boring,” Miles snapped back.

No. Classic was classic because classic _worked_ , you fool.

“We can do an Indie issue just for you for Christmas,” Ganke hissed. “But first, classic.”

Miles rolled his eyes and faced forward in his seat. Ganke knew he was still bristling. He poked his back with the top of his pencil and watched him jump and then glare.

“ _Miles_. Come on, man.”

“Look, I _am_ Spiderman, Ganke. I don’t need to read comics about Spiderman or Cap or—any of them honestly? I just _meet_ them and they tell me nothing, ever, ever, ever and then when they do tell me something, it’s like a big deal. Trust fall. That kind of thing,” Miles explained with his hands on the way home.

“Yeah, and I get that,” Ganke said. “But we’re making a comic. How can you make a comic without reading comics?”

“I know the aesthetic,” Miles snapped. “Everyone knows the aesthetic. It’s on everything.”

“But do you _really?_ ” Ganke asked.

Miles stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and made Ganke crash into his back like a dick. He whipped around and pouted hard.

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

Christ, not this again.

“I _said_ , do you trust me?”

It was always this. In line for the rollercoaster. At the edge of the pier. By the docks. On the spiderweb at the playground.

The answer was ‘no.’ The answer was actually ‘fuck no, Miles. You’re a bad liar and a little shit _constantly_ ,’ but Mom would not approve and so it was ‘no.’

“Obviously, I trust you,” Ganke sighed.

Honesty would get them nowhere at this point.

“Great. So trust me,” Miles huffed. “I’ll do a draft tonight.”

Miles arrived to school the next day looking like an overstuffed peacock. He shoved a stack of papers across the table like they were poker chips and just dared Ganke to look at them.

He did.

For the 40 seconds it took for him to put them back down and hold his head in his hands.

Miles had no idea how to draw panels. Or trashcans apparently. Sure, yeah, it was just a draft, but it looked _nothing_ like a comic was supposed to. All the angles were all over the place and there was too much detail in all the panels, like dude.

The whole thing didn’t have to happen in four pages. There could be five or even six pages here. It was okay to drag things out. The point was to drag the intro out. It was what got people used to the art style and made you decide if you liked the character enough to keep going.

“No? Is it bad?”

Ganke sighed and put the papers back in their stack.

“It’s not bad. But you need to read comics,” he said.

Miles went stiff with offense.

“No, I don’t,” he said.

“Yes, you do.”

“I don’t.”

“Miles.”

“I live in a comic, Ganke, I told you this.”

Ganke didn’t know how to help him.

“They’re too crowded,” he said. “It’s all happening too fast.”

Miles squinted at him, then at the pages in his hands. He flipped through them.

“I like them this way,” he said. “They’re busy. BT’s a busy guy.”

“There needs to be room for speech bubbles,” Ganke spelled out for him.

“There’s only like five lines, man. How many speech bubbles do you want?”

Amateurs were _exhausting_. There was only one person who Miles was going to listen to.

“Look at this!!” Cap exclaimed. “This is so good, kiddo.”

Miles directed a smug chin Ganke’s way. Ganke met it with cut eyes. Cap would see it. Cap was not an idiot. His Alpine panels showed that he knew things about comics.

“Can’t wait to see it inked. Do you have pens?” Cap asked, already leaving them at his weird L-shaped art bench to go rifle through drawers.

“I have pens,” Miles confirmed, eyes still trained on Ganke’s.

“You need white-out then,” Cap carried on. “Masking fluid if you’re going to—are you using this paper?”

Miles turned back.

“Yeah,” he said.

Cap scowled.

“No, you can’t use this paper,” he said. “The ink’ll bleed right through.”

Miles frowned.

“How I am supposed to do the inks then?” he asked as Cap rifled around under his sink-desk contraption.

“Light box,” Cap said. “New paper, heavier paper. Are you painting any?”

Miles’s lip began a journey to jutting. Ganke’s own began one towards triumph.

“I don’t know yet,” Miles said acerbically.

Cap hummed and fished out a thick rectangle with a power cord attached. He held it aloft with a big Cap-smile.

“Light box,” he said.

Miles scowled.

“Why?” he asked.

“For clean lines,” Cap said. “If you erase too much on this paper, it’ll tear. You don’t want that, right?”

Ganke smirked as things finally, finally started to sink in for his dear buddy here.

Cap was a worthy ally. He arranged all the supplies it would take for Miles to ink the panels on his L-benches and started yammering on and on about masking fluid and different pen sizes and something about blue versus white tape until Miles finally threw in the towel and asked if there was maybe an easier way to do all this.

Cap beamed.

His face was stuck that way, Ganke now knew. It was his ‘I am _barely_ containing all my Artistic Dickhead Criticism’ face.

“Well,” Cap said. “The other option is to go digital and the other, other option is to simplify.”

Miles looked like he’d just licked a subway pole.

“I don’t have anything to do digital stuff with,” he said.

“Then it would seem that your option is to simplify,” Cap said gamely.

Miles threw a piercing look at Ganke like this was somehow all his fault.

“How do I simplify?” he asked through gritted teeth.

Cap sent Ganke out to the living room while he tortured Miles with after-school education. Ganke was fine with that because Sergeant Barnes was out in the living room with his hair all twisted into a huge braid that made him look like he had a koi head from behind, kind of like a reverse-mermaid but 10% less weird.

Sergeant Barnes noticed him and when Ganke explained the reason for his banishment, he scoffed and said ‘artists’ all exasperated-like.

“You tell them to do one thing and they fuck off and do their own,” he said.

Amen to that.

“You wrote your script yet?”

Yes. Part of it.

“Give it here, let’s see it.”

Sergeant Barnes told him the script was fine, but then he started asking questions about future chapters and things began to fall apart pretty fast. Ganke honestly didn’t know how he was going to get from BT introducing himself to Sun Wukong arriving on the scene to BT throwing down with him.

“Well,” Sergeant Barnes asked, “What do they each want?”

Ganke didn’t get it. Sergeant Barnes sat up a little and repeated the question.

“Everyone’s got to want something in a story,” he said. “Like, what do you want from your story?”

“I want BT to save the day, I guess,” Ganke said.

“Kay. And what does he want?”

BT?

“Yeah.”

To fight Monkey?

“Yeah, but why?”

Hm. Maybe for his little brother?

“Why?”

Maybe Sun Wukong bullied him?

“And how does that change what we already know about him?”

Oh.

It, uh.

It didn’t.

Sergeant Barnes reached a hand behind his head and pulled his hair out from where it was stuck behind his shoulders and the arm of the couch.

“Stories are about growth, kid,” he said. “If your characters don’t grow, then why are you even writing?”

That was a good point.

“I don’t think I know enough about BT to know how he grows,” he admitted.

“Mm. Yeah. Newbies are like that,” Sergeant Barnes said. “They don’t typically last long enough to make it worth proddin’ ‘em.”

Ganke felt his chest clam up suddenly.

“You mean they die?” he asked.

Sergeant Barnes hummed and then nodded slowly.

Was—was Miles a newbie?

“That’s if they even break surface to begin with,” Sergeant Barnes continued. “You know there are hundreds of rookies who stand up every year?”

Ganke hadn’t known that, no.

“Yeah,” Sergeant Barnes said. “You can pick ‘em out of crowds. They got this kinda aura about ‘em. Isolatin’. Stewin’. Usually mad. Usually stupid. People think all it takes to be a vigilante is a mask and a fist, but that ain’t it, kid. That ain’t it.”

“What else do you need?” Ganke asked quietly. His script felt really dry in his hands all of the sudden.

“Most of the time? A boost,” Sergeant Barnes said. He rolled over and grinned at Ganke. Even relaxed with his hair falling out of that braid, his smile still seemed sharp. Too white. His lips were a little too raw. Ganke could see the phantom of the Soldier hovering over him in the gray shadows under his eyes.

“What’s a boost?” Ganke asked.

The Sergeant pushed himself all the way up to sitting and set his phone face-down on the couch arm.

“Depends. A weapon, maybe. Some training. A _suit_.”

A suit.

“A teacher.”

A teacher.

“Your boy’s making waves, did you know that, Ganke?”

He shook himself and found Sergeant Barnes watching him with eyes that seemed grayer than they had just a few moments ago.

“I don’t understand,” Ganke said.

“Blindspot,” Sergeant Barnes said. “His name is starting to echo around this place. People say that he’s the one who handled Muse.”

Muse?

“You don’t know Muse?”

Muse the artist? That guy?

Sergeant Barnes hummed.

“That was Daredevil,” Ganke said. “He’s the one who brought him in.”

“So the papers said,” Sergeant Barnes said. “But word is that the devil wasn’t the first to sound the alarm. A little birdie did. Black and white and red all over. People are saying that the devil only stepped in because Muse crushed his little birdie. Word from what’s left of Muse is that he’s not done with the poor thing. Said he’s not dead yet.”

“I thought he was dead,” Ganke whispered.

Sergeant Barnes lifted an eyebrow at him.

“The world would be a better place,” he said. “But it is an interesting question, you know. Folks are asking if the devil is coming back to the Kitchen and if he comes, where does that leave the birdie? Does he stay or does he go? Did Blindspot go to the west coast to settle? Or did his teacher take him there to protect him from the first guy he wasn’t ready to take?”

Ganke shivered.

“BT wouldn’t run,” he said.

Sergeant Barnes’s lips quirked up and he shifted back to lay down on the couch again.

“Blindspot’s a breath of fresh air,” he said. “Clint says he’s a good student to his teacher. Loyal. Grateful. You don’t see that kind of thing much around these parts these days. People like that are one in a thousand. People like that with the guts to sink below the surface? One in a _million_. If little Blindspot shows up back here with his teach one of these days, you bet your ass there’s gonna be a line of folks trying to get their hands on that legacy.”

That what?

“Legacy,” Sergeant Barnes said. “You know. Like your pal. He’s a legacy.”

The stone that had begun to pull Ganke’s stomach downwards was a perfect sphere. A black, polished stone with little snowflakes of white. Obsidian. Gleaming and heavy.

“Miles is a legacy,” he repeated.

“Miles is a legacy,” Sergeant Barnes confirmed. “People are getting old, Ganke. The old guard’ve got cracking bones and bad backs now. They’re looking for replacements. If your boy hadn’t been snapped up by Spidey, and we didn’t have Sam standin’ around, bein’ perfect, then Steve would’ve taken him in a heartbeat.”

Holy shit.

“So my question to you is this,” Sergeant Barnes said. “What does Blindspot want more than anything, _anything_ else in your story?”

To break the surface. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you ever want to surround young best friends of superheroes with old, wizened best friends of superheroes? Because I do ❤ Ned, MJ, Bucky, Foggy, _protect him, please for the love of God._
> 
> **for the folks wondering about Muse. In this Verse, Matt and Sam deal with him in the months before the Inimitable Crew officially meets Sam.


	5. like riding a bike

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Spidey isn’t ready to accept a legacy,” Miles said. “But I think…I think I’m almost ready to be one.”

Miles emerged from Cap’s studio juggling a handful of papers, a weird-looking mouse pad, and a stack of comic issues that looked like they belonged to a guy who read them like newspapers.

Ganke wished he could say that when he looked at him, he just saw his best friend--just his Miles, 14, going on 15. Familiar dark warm skin and heavy lashes. Familiar spindly wrists and fluffy hair.

But he didn’t see Miles.

He saw the gangly outline of Spiderman--the early Spiderman. The Spiderman from back when they were both really little and watching Youtube videos of Spidey ripping through traffic and cracking concrete with his fists, shoulders, and head.

Spidey had seemed huge then, but the joke was these days that he’d been in his second evolutionary form. Ganke could watch those old videos now with awe at the thinness of Spidey’s limbs. He could have wrapped both of his hands around that young Spidey’s waist and nearly touched fingers on both sides.

Miles came down the stairs with the same arms and legs and waist.

He came down the stairs as a legacy. A soon-to-be. A hero-in-the-making.

And Ganke was just—

Just a dude. Just a kid.

Fat and loud and disrespectful. Hell, he couldn’t even read Korean. He spent all his time yammering on about comics and doing homework, and Miles went out and saved the world.

Ganke’s teeth hurt.

Miles was saying something to him, he realized. He snapped out of it, shook his head, and agreed, and Miles furrowed his forehead and eyebrows and asked him if he was okay.

He said he was.

Miles didn’t believe him.

Cap’s eyes were icy blue. On the way out, Ganke saw them snap over to Sergeant Barnes’s gray ones and stay there.

“Steve said that he started with this,” Miles explained, wriggling the mousepad-looking thing onto the top of his pile of art supplies. “It’s a tablet. He gave me his old software, too. He said that if I want, I can come over and use his big computer.”

Cap wanted Miles as a legacy.

Cap saw in Miles the spark of a national icon.

“Ganke?”

“Hmm?”

Miles’s lips pulled tight into one corner.

“Are you actually okay?” he asked.

Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was having second thoughts. Like, Miles had a whole world to save, and Ganke was holding him back, making him draw panels for a shitty comic that BT probably wouldn’t even read.

“Hey.”

He looked back up.

“Why’re you sad?” Miles asked outright.

There was a cemetery around the mid-way point between their homes. It was probably a weird place for a couple of kids to spend their time, but it had a fence all around it and you didn’t have to go into the cemetery itself. You could just go and sit next to the fence and watch the sun set over all the headstones.

It was maybe a little morbid, but it was also kind of peaceful and staying after dark was a little exhilarating.

They’d started sitting by the fence about a year ago, after Ganke’s mom had decided that Auntie needed to move in and they didn’t have enough space for her to do it.

“It’s not like that, Ganke. You know it’s not like that,” Miles said. “I _like_ hanging out with you. I _like_ when you boss me around and yell at me.”

Maybe. But it wasn’t right, was it?

“Why isn’t it right? You’re my best friend. That’s what best friends do.”

Miles deserved a better best friend. Someone cooler. A superhero who understood what he went through on the daily. Ganke was just…a bully.

Miles punched him in the arm, and it _hurt_. The whole thing went numb and his fingers went tingly. He swore.

“What the hell was that for?” he snapped.

“For shit talking my best friend,” Miles snapped back.

“Well, it’s not my fault it’s true,” Ganke said.

“It’s not true,” Miles said.

“Come on, man. You don’t have to—”

“I’ll punch you again, Ganke, see if I don’t. I’m serious. Stop. Talking. Shit. About my best friend. Alright?”

“Okay, okay. Alright, fine.”

The grass under them was yellow and dry, but in a few weeks there would be rain and they wouldn’t be able to sit by the cemetery fence for another long while.

“Everyone has normal-people best friends,” Miles said quietly.

Ganke lifted his head.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

Miles pulled his knees up closer to his chest.

“Everyone has them,” he said. “Spidey’s friends are mostly normal people. Angel’s whole everyone is normal. Even Wade’s friends are just this like, bartender and a taxi driver. Everyone’s got their people. And it’s like. It’s really, _really_ nice to have them because they knew you before everything changed. And they see you for who you are, like you-you. Not the mask. Not the superhero. Just…you.”

Miles dropped his eyes and rocked back and forth a bit.

“I know it seems glamorous and stuff, bein’ Spiderman all the time, but people aren’t like that,” he continued. “Cap’s not like that. I like to—he’s cool. I mean. Like Cap is amazing, but Steve is just cool. And friendly--sorta. He talks shit about everyone and everything, and he asks Sarge to remind him that the world isn’t a writhing cesspool every day because he gets overwhelmed after reading the news. And he hates shoes that you have to tie the laces for and he spends all his time trying to find a yogurt that isn’t too sweet and like—I think he does that around me to remind me that people like us are still just people. And it’s _important_ to just be people. And it’s important to have and need other people to help us and to be our friends because otherwise, we’d drown in the work. It wouldn’t mean anything anymore. You’d get sloppy. You’d get forgetful and mean and angry and bitter and nothing would even mean anything anymore. You would just go through the motions. But when I start feeling that way, a lot of times, I stop and I think about like, you, or my dad or mom or Acadec and I remember what’s important.”

Ganke’s eyes felt hot and messy.

“I need to be a better friend,” he said.

“No,” Miles said. “I don’t need you to change for me. I need you to be you. That’s all I’ve ever needed.”

Ganke sniffed hard and pressed a sleeve into his eyes.

“Do you…” Miles started. “Feel the same--?”

Ganke cleared his throat.

“Yeah. _Obviously_ , Miles,” he coughed out. “Obviously.”

Miles smiled at him with closed lips.

“What did Sarge say to you?” he asked. “Steve looked like he was gonna put ‘im on the rack.”

Ah.

“Nothin’ bad,” Ganke sighed. “He was telling me how legacies worked.”

“Ah.”

Ah?

“He told you about how people are looking for folks to replace them?”

Yeah, pretty much.

“Yeah, it’s pretty intense. Spidey told me not to worry about it and to steer clear of anyone talkin’ big.”

Wait. That didn’t make sense, though. Miles was Spidey’s legacy.

“Kind of,” Miles said, dragging a hand through the dry yellow grass and finding a straw to pick at. “But not really. Spidey—we haven’t really talked about it. But I don’t think Spidey—Peter, I mean. Sorry, he’s just Peter for this—Peter doesn’t believe in legacies.”

 _What_.

“Yeah,” Miles said. “He told me that any time I feel like I’m done, that’s fine. I’m out.”

Dude, _what_?

That didn’t make any sense at all. Did he think he was invincible? Did he not care? Did he—did he hate Spiderman? He hadn’t seemed like he’d hated Spiderman back at his apartment.

“He was meant to be one—a legacy, I mean,” Miles said to the stalk of grass he was twirling between his fingertips.

“For who? There was no Spiderman before Spiderman,” Ganke said, feeling breathless somehow.

Miles sighed.

“Tony Stark,” he said. “And I guess things started off okay, but then got really, really bad. Peter’s got these like, mental health problems. He told me that he can’t see himself as a person worth anything on a lot of days, and he’s really trying to, Ganke. He goes to therapy every week, but it’s like it doesn’t stick. He’s like more than ten years older than us and he’s just finally realized that he doesn’t have to answer a phone call if he doesn’t want to. But then he gets all freaked out that someone’s going to die if he doesn’t answer and so he answers anyways and then there’s more work and more work and he can’t say no, so it goes on and on and on until there’s a panic attack and he can’t leave the house for like, three days straight”

Holy shit. They never put that in the Spidey comics, now did they?

“Yeah,” Miles said. He dropped his knees, stretched his legs, and then refolded them criss-cross-apple-sauce style.

Ganke swallowed and found his throat dry.

“So he’s a failed legacy?” he asked.

“I think he thought so for a while,” Miles said. “But nowadays, I think he mostly doesn’t think about it. He calls himself Spiderman and he owns it. And I think he’s secretly super offended when other people call themselves Spiderman and pretend to be him. Like, he hates his comics—I dunno if you know that.”

He--He did?

All of them?

“Yeah,” Miles said. “All of them. It’s not about the stories. It’s about the backstory. Like. Spidey became Spiderman because someone murdered his uncle and he didn’t get there in time to stop them, even though he had powers at the time.”

Good God.

“Uh-huh. And the Carmichael stuff—you know, the one where Spidey’s dad is a mad scientist who mutates him and then tries to mutate other people?”

Yeah, Ganke knew it. It was the leading backstory at the moment. Jane Carmichael had finally had enough of the ever-shifting backstory for Spidey comics four or five years back and had written that one to put an end to it. It really had been an end to it. There had been no other backstories since.

“Yeah,” Miles said. “Peter lost both of his parents before he even got to kindergarten. He doesn’t remember them at all. So I think he reads that evil scientist guy as his uncle, and it makes him so mad he can’t get through a single issue.”

Well, shit.

“I don’t think he wants that for me,” Miles said. “The comics, the panic attacks, the phone calls—any of it. But I don’t think he can stop it, so he keeps giving me this out. He gives everyone this out, where we can all leave at any time, no questions asked.”

That was some serious stuff.

“I know,” Miles said. “But it’s like—how do I describe it?” he tossed down his stalk of grass, flexed his knuckles, and frowned deep. “It’s like, he _expects_ us all to go? It’s like he’s just waiting for us to fuck off? Angel said it a few weeks ago. She thinks that he’s waiting for all of us to leave the team and never talk to him again. She suspects that’s why he never tells us anything about how he’s actually doing in real life. He only talks to Wade and Red about it. Everything else, he pretends is fine and no big deal.”

“So it makes you want to stay more,” Ganke realized.

Miles turned his face Ganke’s way. In the dying light, his cheeks and eyes shone golden.

“Spidey isn’t ready to accept a legacy,” Miles said. “But I think…I think I’m almost ready to be one.”

“Do you think he’ll say yes when you tell him?” Ganke asked.

Miles set his jaw.

“I’m giving myself a year,” he said. “And then I’m going to choose, and it’s not going to matter what he thinks. Ironman picked him and it didn’t work. But that’s the thing. I’ve been watching others. Hawkeye the Younger, for example. She picked Old Man Hawkeye. They’re fine. And Mr. Wilson? Steve offered him the shield, but he made the choice to take it. And they’re fine. And, well.”

Well?

Miles shuffled his feet in the dry grass.

“You know how you said that BT is for you what Mr. Wilson is for me?” he asked.

Ganke remembered, yeah.

“That’s not entirely true,” Miles said. “BT—Sam. His name is Sam. He’s the guy I’m watching right now. Ganke, he threw _everything_ away. He left his home, his sister, his apartment, his job. He lost his mom. He lost his sight. But he chose DD and he still chooses DD. DD didn’t even know him, man, but Sam rolled up to SF and picked him and held on tight and he’s doing it. He’s making himself into a legacy, and he and DD don’t even share a mask. And that’s like— _unbelievable_. He gets to be a legacy _and_ he gets to be Blindspot. He’s figured out how to be both. And I want—I want to be Spiderman, yeah. But I want to be _my own_ Spiderman. I don’t want to just be the guy in the black suit or the black Spiderman. I want to be myself _and_ Peter’s legacy. I want to do what he can and what he can’t and I want to show him that it’s okay. He’s not alone. He doesn’t have to do this forever. When he’s ready, he can stop and Spiderman will live on. I’ll keep people safe; I won’t let this thing—this person that he’s made--fade into the background as some urban legend. I won’t let that happen. This city needs us. And we have this great responsibility.”

Ganke swallowed and looked at his limp hands hanging off his knees.

“How long have you been thinking about this?” he asked.

“’Bout a month now,” Miles said.

A month. Okay. Okay, that was doable.

“You want to do the comic to get inside BT’s head,” Ganke said.

“I want to figure out how he’s done it, yeah, because I need to figure out how he got that through to DD,” Miles said. “But I also just want to draw a comic with you, my best friend. And I want Sam to know that people already think of him as a real vigilante, ‘cause he jokes sometimes that everyone just sees him as DD’s sidekick. So I guess it’s like, everybody wins?”

‘Sam.’ Sam and Miles. Legacies in the making.

Huh.

Wait.

“If you two are so similar and shit, why do you send each other like, a thousand knife emojis?” Ganke blurted out.

Miles stared at him.

“Because if he thinks I care, I’ll lose,” he said.

Lose what?

“It doesn’t matter,” Miles said. “I’ll lose. And I can’t lose.”

Okay, well, clearly the moment was now over.

They were going to finish this comic.

It wasn’t about only Ganke anymore. It was about Miles and somehow, having Miles smiling at waving in the back of his head changed things.

It changed everything actually.

BT wanted to break the surface. Miles wanted to break the surface.

Miles wanted to show Spidey that he’d catch him if he fell. BT had convinced Daredevil somehow that he’d do that.

It was just a matter of figuring out how. And Ganke had an idea for that.

It involved a monkey.

**GL:** Miles I need you to describe Daredevil’s reaction to animals.

 **MM:** ?

 **GL:** just go with it.

 **MM:** uh? Well? Red’s got 2 dogs that he’s obsessed with?

Damnit.

Alright, new tactic.

**GL:** are they Daredogs?

 **MM:** no they’re guide dogs.

Oh. Wait.

**GL:** he’s talked about them online before, hasn’t he? In BT’s AMA?

 **MM:** I guess??

 **GL:** great so Monkey is going to dognap them and declare himself Daredevil, then he’s going to tell Blindspot that he can’t disrespect his teacher.

 **MM:** oh my god

 **MM:** Is he gonna wear the horns?

 **GL:** yeah, he’s gonna make himself into a whole fake Daredevil. Like the copy cat guy

 **MM:** omg Dave, your moment of fame has finally come

 **GL:** What? No. Not like him. Just kinda like him. In spirit.

 **GL:** Anyways. Sun Wukong is going to come to New York in search of some ancient magical thing. Like, an important, fancy umbrella or something that he needs to settle a score with Pig, who wants it to impress some lady. When Sun Wukong gets to nyc, tho, he’s confused because of all the BT shrines, so he thinks that whoever the shrines belong to is the warrior who guards the umbrella, right? So he decides that he’s going to trick this warrior into leading him to the umbrella and he learns that it’s BT and that BT’s teacher is Daredevil.

 **MM:** I 👏🏾 love 👏🏾 THIS 👏🏾

 **GL:** right???

 **GL:** okay so Sun Wukong goes out and finds Daredevil and steals his clothes and his dogs and transforms himself into DD, then he goes out to confront BT and demands that he take him to the umbrella, but BT has no idea what he’s talking about. But he knows the dogs and they are acting weird. And he goes ‘Someone hurt my teacher!! I’ve gotta save him!!’

 **MM:** yeah BT would die for the dogs so I could see this

 **GL:** ..the dogs?

 **MM:** yah

 **GL:** not DD?

 **MM:** yah

 **GL:** I’m leaving that

 **MM:** probably smart

 **GL:** So BT decides that he’s going to play along to get Sun Wukong to admit where he’s hidden DD. He’s all ‘oh, sensei, what is it that you need me to do? You know I’ll do whatever you tell me to.’ And Sun Wukong is like ‘What a respectful boy. I need you to show me where the Fancy Umbrella is.’ And BT’s like, ‘that umbrella thing is a myth! And even if it wasn’t, it ain’t gonna be in nyc. But this guy doesn’t seem fully with it. I’ll take him to a tourist trap in Chinatown and let him at all the umbrellas and while he’s distracted, I’ll take the dogs and they’ll run home.’

 **MM:** I mean

 **MM:** home? No. They’re guide dogs, Ganke. They’d just try to guide BT.

 **GL:** Miles these are comic dogs. Not real world dogs.

 **MM:** okay, fine but like, at least one of them is going to freak out and try to stay with Monkey if she thinks he’s DD.

 **GL:** what really?

 **MM:** yeah they’re like trained to do that

 **GL:** wild. But they’re not in our story, so no.

 **GL:** So BT tells Sun Wukong that he’ll take him to the umbrella, but on the way to Chinatown, there’s a huge boom and in his surprise, Sun Wukong changes back into a monkey and BT FREAKS OUT. Because that’s Sun Wukong. The real thing. He tries to get out of there before Sun Wukong does something stupid and dangerous, but Sun Wukong won’t have it and yells at him to stay put, but then BT gets mad and demands to know if Sun Wukong hurt DD.

 **MM:** did he?

 **GL:** I mean yeah. This is monkey we’re talking about

 **MM:** I don’t want to hurt Red ☹

 **GL:** great I’ll do it for you

 **MM:** but I don’t want to draw him hurt. He’s old, ganke. He tore his knee muscle thing and it clicks sometimes now

 **GL:** miles this DD isn’t real

 **MM:** I know but I’m still 😥

 **GL:** UGH fine. DD’s not hurt. He’s trapped in a basement somewhere mad as hell

 **MM:** ❤ kay

 **GL:** And Sun Wukong makes a deal with BT that he will take him to DD, but only if he helps him find the umbrella. So BT’s like ‘damn, now I have to actually find this fake thing.’

 **MM:** Sam would say ‘fuck.’

 **GL:** I’m THIS close to firing you and hiring Cap as my artist

 **MM:** NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 **GL:** then shut up

 **MM:** ☹ ☹ ☹

 **GL:** So BT and Sun Wukong set out to find the umbrella. They head towards Chinatown to ask around but when they get there, and an old man tells them that people used to think this umbrella in the middle of this kitschy restaurant was THE umbrella, but the whole building is collapsed. And who’s standing outside it?

 **MM:** who?

 **GL:** Muse. But not to worry, BT’s gonna kick his ass with Sun Wukong.

 **MM:** okay but he has to win.

 **GL:** obviously he’s going to win

 **MM:** No I mean. He HAS to win because one time, someone mentioned Muse in the group chat and BT didn’t talk to us for a week because he had anxiety

 **GL:** wait, really?

 **MM:** yeah it was pretty bad. He’s not the only one who does that tho everyone has their things

 **GL:** oh shit

 **MM:** Maybe there’s some other villain?

 **GL:** who are BT’s other nemeses then?

 **MM:** idk

 **MM:** want me to ask?

 **GL:** yes.

 **MM:** one minute.

Ganke felt bad. He tapped at his laptop’s mousepad.

There were so many mines among these people. It was trying to ride a bike around the potholes in the old park by Miles’s house. Every time you thought you were past one, you had to swerve around another.

Man.

How did people write comics? Did they do this? Or did they just go ahead with whatever the hell they wanted?

He had a feeling it was the second one, which sucked. No wonder superpeople didn’t like reading their media. No one wanted to ride a bike in a pothole-y street.

**MM:** GANKE

Oh, that was fast.

**GL:** sup?

 **MM:** 1\. DD says BT’s greatest nemesis is his own youth and naivety. 2. BT’s gonna be in NYC!!

**GL: WHAT**

**MM:** YEAH!!

 **MM:** I guess DD & Co. are going to get things rolling to re-set up an office out here and a few of them are coming to check out real estate. BT’s leaving in two weeks. He’s doing a job for DD in LA and then after that, he’s catching a bus out this way.

 **GL:** he’s taking the bus??? Why would he bus to nyc?

 **MM:** idk. He doesn’t like flying ig.

 **GL:** dude.

 **MM:** Spidey told me to tell you that this is our chance to surprise him! If we finish everything by then, we can give it to him in person.

 **GL:** two weeks

 **MM:** yeah

 **GL:** that’s impossible. We can’t finish this all in 2 weeks. This is like, a full character arc miles. This is at least eight issues.

 **MM:** Well.

 **GL:** well?

 **MM:** The good news is that I draw fast.

 **GL:** drawing fast doesn’t mean anything, we can’t do 8 issues in two weeks. No one can do 8 issues in two weeks.

 **MM:** Okay so technically, it’ll take him at LEAST 3 days to transit his way across country, so that’s 2 weeks and 3 days and then he’s gonna be super tired, so that’s another day for us, and then I’m sure he’ll be busy doing work stuff, so TECHNICALLY it’s more like 3 weeks :D

 **GL:** …

 **MM:** is that a no?

 **GL:** we need someone to do the colors.

 **MM:** I got a guy.

 **GL:** Who

 **MM:** don’t worry about it

 **GL:** I’m worrying. It’s you isn’t it?

 **MM:** 😊

 **MM:** he’s super SUPER fast, don’t worry about it. I’ll ask him. In the meantime, we need to make 8 issues into like, 1 issue.

 **GL:** what is that supposed to mean?

 **MM:** okay so I looked it up right? 1 issue = 32 pages.

 **GL:** uh huh

 **MM:** we have 5 pgs rn just for the opener. We’re wasting space and pages, man. We need to change the pacing.

The nerve of this guy. Finally he reads a comic, and all of the sudden, he’s the expert? Typical Miles.

**GL:** we’re not changing the pacing. The pacing is fine.

 **MM:** Ganke I changed my style for you.

Wow. That blow was _low_.

UGH.

**GL:** …fine.

 **MM:** NICE. You get 2 pages for each of 16 scenes. Make them count. We have 3 weeks. We need to be at least halfway through the story by the time we give BT his copy. We can do another one and then mail it to him or smth later once we’ve got everyone invested, but that’s how long we’ve got.

 **GL:** I hate you

 **MM:** awwwwww I love you too bud ❤

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am in the final sprint for my dissertation y'all ;___;  
> this is currently my emotional support fic


	6. only a block and a half

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Page—
> 
> Page—
> 
> “It’s done,” Miles breathed at the computer screen between them.
> 
> Ganke could just about collapse, he was so tired.
> 
> “Not yet,” he said.

This changed _everything_.

There was no more time for lollygagging. No more time for research. They had to buckle down and crank this sucker out.

Ganke was pretty sure that this was how those after-school cram school kids in South Korea and Japan felt. He and Miles did school-school, then rushed home and locked themselves in one of their rooms and drew and typed and drew and typed and retyped and groaned and hissed and swore.

Miles even devolved to saying ‘fuck.’

Ganke was proud of him for this long-coming achievement.

But even with all of that work, a week rolled past and all they had to show for it was 12 finished pages.

They looked _amazing_. They were so cool. Miles was so proud of them and the rise and fall of his shoulders when he flicked through them all consecutively made Ganke feel some kind of way. It was a different kind of way from the way that he felt when he saw Miles on the news in the Spiderman suit. He wasn’t sure how to describe it.

Still though. 12 pages. One week. They could make this happen if they kept on at this pace, but it was _brutal_.

“We need to be faster,” Ganke said.

Miles looked over at him.

“This is _incredible_ ,” Spidey said, flipping through the pages on his laptop.

Ganke’s throat started closing without permission. His eyes stung a little around the edges.

“Do you think he’ll like it?” Miles asked.

Spidey whipped back their way with a giant lop-sided grin.

“He’s gonna cry,” he said.

Oh. Perfect. That was what Ganke was going for. Ahem.

“Ned’ll love this, too,” Spidey said. “I’m sure he can help. He edits a bunch of different zines.”

How old people found time to like, work, have boyfriends, have girlfriends, cook, eat out, and edit a load of different zines for some grassroots publishing organization, Ganke would never understand.

Spidey called Ned ‘hypercompetent’ and ‘really deep in Star Wars fandom—like, Mariana’s Trench deep. Unknown-invertebrate-with-no-eyes deep.’

He himself wasn’t this involved with what he referred to as ‘transformative works.’

“I used to be,” he explained while Ned dumped all his work stuff and his tie off in the bedroom. “But then my therapist told me that my hobby was a process of me triggering myself and told me to get new ones, so I started collecting plants by accident.”

Triggering? How?

“Peter’s into sci-fi films,” Ned said as he re-emerged from the bedroom. “Specifically anything with aliens.”

“I love aliens,” Spidey said.

“Except where you hate aliens.”

“Except where I hate aliens,” Spidey agreed solemnly. His eyes flashed and latched on to Miles “One of youse is gonna watch _Alien_ with me, though, don’t think I’ve forgotten,” he said.

“It’s Angel,” Miles said.

Spidey did not drop his eye.

Ned slapped at his shoulder until he moved away from the laptop screen.

Ned printed out all the pages and laid them out in a grid on the table. He walked through the whole thing with Ganke and Miles and explained that their pages were a really solid set.

“But?” Miles asked.

“But if you’re on a timeline, then you need to be snappin’, not draggin’,” Ned said.

He had a Queens accent like Spidey, but his wasn’t as strong. He didn’t say where he was from, but if Ganke had to guess, he would say Woodside.

“Cut the fluff,” Ned said. “It’ll be a little artsy. It’s gonna make things look really fast on paper, but if you use the space right, you can create the illusion of time passing. You gotta really focus in on composition. It’s gotta be intentional. You don’t have to spell everything out for your reader. And be careful to—look at me. Look into my eyes.”

He waited until both Miles and Ganke were doing just that.

“Do not. Add. More text,” he said. “Swear to me that you will not.”

He waited until they had sworn before breaking out a few examples.

Miles rejoiced at having permission to go full-Indie-artist and, while Ganke was kind of wary of it, he could admit that he’d read some manga that used similar techniques. They didn’t spell everything out like American comics did, and their readers got along just fine.

Miles rattled on about how that was what he’d been saying from the beginning.

Ganke called him a weeaboo, though, and that successfully knocked him off his high horse.

They took that Sunday off. Ganke felt confused and guilty for doing it. His hands itched. He kept opening a new document on his computer and then closing it, telling himself that he could work tomorrow. _Tomorrow_.

Monday was a big day because Miles sent him a handful of screenshots from the team group chat. He said that he’d taken the opportunity to tease BT. He told Ganke that it was called ‘creating some hype.’

Ganke wanted to deck him.

**S4:** I’m just saying that when you get here, there might be something waiting for you.

 **BT:** **I will tear this town apart if it’s a puppy**

 **DD:** Puppies?

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : I have a puppy

 **SM:** Bella is not a dog wade. She is still a cat, regardless of what Nate tells you.

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : how do you know? She fetches. She barks.

 **SM:** she shits in a box

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : shitting in a box does not a cat make. Here I’ll prove it

 **DD:** please don’t

 **S2:** ASAHASDFASDFA

 **S3:** someone. Brain bleach. Immediately.

 **SM:** do it

 **DD:** do not

 **SM:** coward

 **BT:** **you have not distracted me, Miles Morales. What is the thing?**

 **S2:** damn sam’s all serious business today

 **S3:** perhaps it is a hug?

 **BT:** disgusting. I want no hugs I am the night

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : lol You’re like, robin at best, shortstuff

 **BT:** no I am the night.

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : You’re telling me you’re more batman than Mr. Dolphin Brain over there?

 **DD:** 😃

 **BT:** No. No emojis for you. You’ve lost privileges. You know what you did.

 **DD:** 😥

 **S2:** lol. Okay but what if it isn’t a puppy or a hug? What if it’s a snack?

 **BT:** owo!!

 **BT:** Bitsy did you get me seaweed snacks? Did Hannah tell you of my only true and loyal love? The only thing I can depend on in this cruel world? My sole reason for waking up in the morning?

 **DD:** more than justice?

 **BT:** SEAWEED SNACK

 **DD:** Noted.

 **S3:** ah yes. This is how I feel about the white cheddar cheezits these days.

 **S2:** are you doing okay louis?

 **S3:** lately? No.

 **SM:** I can fix this

 **S3:** I will be fired

 **SM:** not if he’s fired first

 **S3:** Spidey let me build my paper trail in peace please it’s all I have left

 **S2:** hugs for Louis?

 **SM:** hugs

 **S4:** hugs

 **DD:** don’t like hugs. Take a pat

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : Love me a hug. Come here

 **S3:** no thank you box-shitter

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : ehehehehehe

 **BT:** Louis. Listen to me. There is something that can solve this problem in a heartbeat. Faster than you can say go. I have done it many a time.

 **S3:** is it seaweed snacks, Sam?

 **BT:** **you bet your ass it is**

 **S3:** ah yes. thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.

Ganke didn’t know what to say to this. He honestly thought that maybe Blindspot’s standards could afford to be a little higher.

**MM:** so??? He’s pumped. It’s gonna be so great.

 **GL:** Miles he wants a box of dried seaweed sheets.

 **MM:** a what

 **GL:** now we gotta go get one AND finish this comic so that we don’t disappoint him twice over you moron

 **MM:** I thought seaweed snack was rice cracker?

 **GL:** <\-- You | me | The point -->

 **MM:** idk what that is supposed to mean so where do we get seaweed snacks?

 **GL:** sometimes I wonder if that spider liquified part of your brain.

They had 22 pages by that Thursday and Ganke could only sit in shock as he flicked through them.

They’d done it.

They were doing it.

It looked? Good?

It looked real, even?

And Ned was right; the pacing wasn’t as awkward as Ganke thought it would be. He just has to accept that they were only going to get as far as DD getting chucked in a basement and Sun Wukong outing himself to BT in this issue. Ned said that that was okay. Finishing wasn’t the purpose of comics.

It was enough sometimes for half-finished work to simply exist. It opened whole new worlds of possibilities. Finishing was just another stage in the process.

Ganke liked Ned. He had a calming voice and he said things like ‘fandom is supposed to be about fun, you two. So don’t work so hard.’

No one said that kind of thing and meant it anymore. Everyone online just talked about the dos and don’ts and the exhaustion and the working. Only in press releases did people talk about how much fun they had doing the work, but Ganke didn’t know how to reconcile those two mindsets.

Miles was having fun, though.

Miles was getting frustrated, then whispering ‘take _that_ ,’ at his panels. He waged war with the tablet and screamed when he forgot to save page 14 and had to redo it all over again, but he showed up the next day with the apples of his cheeks showing and announced that his mom had _loved_ the new page.

She said that she thought that BT was very good at parkour based on Miles’s drawings, and apparently, Miles could conceive of no greater compliment.

Ganke settled back in his chair and flipped through the pages again.

They were ten pages away from the big reveal. Blindspot’s mask looked at home on the page. Miles drew his eyes wide and then squinty when Ganke wrote in a joke for him.

It was neat.

It was funny.

Ganke had never been more nervous.

Miles must have noticed him fidgeting or something because the next day, he drew in weird fits and starts, then jabbed Ganke in the side with his bony toes. He bullied him until the truth came tumbling out.

“There’s nothing to be nervous about,” he said. “Ganke, BT’s just a guy, I promise you. He’s like Spidey, but more like a seven instead of an eleven. Together they’re only an eighteen.”

Eighteen didn’t mean anything.

They just needed to finish.

“We can stop if it’s not fun anymore.”

Absolutely not.

They’d come this far already.

“ _Ganke_.”

“What?”

“It’s _fine_ ,” Miles said with a firm hand gesture. “Here. Let’s take a break.” 

Miles announced that he wanted shaved ice, so they got shaved ice and were coming back when Miles started whacking at Ganke’s shoulder. Ganke looked up and followed Miles’s pointing finger to see Ned, of all people, exiting a building with his black and red backpack slung over his shoulder.

Miles, ever the social butterfly, shouted out and waved before Ganke could grab him.

Ned noticed. His face went wide and he waved back.

Ned liked shaved ice, too. He chilled with them in the shade and dodged Miles’s 1000 questions about why he was coming out of a non-descript building in the middle of Brooklyn. He smiled about it.

Ganke felt like drowning in his snow cone.

“Pretty sure Tiger’s Blood is just red dye 40, champ,” Ned told Miles.

“Spidey lives off red dye 40 then,” Miles said. “Everything he owns is this red.”

“Pft. As if Peter would touch artificial coloring—have you met May? She’d have a heart attack. I gave him fruit punch once in like, fourth grade, and he told me it was ‘drugs.’”

What kinda hippies—nevermind. It was fine.

“So how’s the comic going?”

Oh, you know.

“We’re taking a break,” Miles reported cheerfully. “We’re more than halfway through.”

“Nice,” Ned said. “Hey, not to add more to your work load, but have y’all talked to Fogs about this?”

Talked to _what_?

“No, why? Miles answered for the two of them.

Ned hummed and picked up a spoonful of green ice.

“Foggy does audio descriptions for stuff,” he said, gesturing with it. “I think he started doing it for Matt when Matt landed his ass in the isolation cube in the clinic for a week. Fogs read a few books and sent them to him so he’d chill out and leave the nurses alone. Then he had the recordings anyways, so he offered them to the library and people really liked his voice. He does a few bits and bobs here and there—lotta kids’ books these days. I was just thinking that since BT is a little--you know--it might be nice if he had a version of your book that he could listen to when he was having a hard day.”

You know? What did that--

Oh.

Right. Of course. Duh.

Okay, but how would that even work? It was a comic book, not a book-book. Just reading it out loud wouldn’t be enough.

Ned chewed on his plastic spoon-straw.

“Let Fogs figure that out,” he said with a shrug. “He and BT live together; he’d know better what would be helpful for him.”

Ned’s phone rang and he pushed away from the wall and left Miles and Ganke to go answer it.

“Who the hell is ‘Foggy?” Ganke hissed.

Miles licked at his bottom lip.

“AWWWWWWW.”

Miles sighed and twisted the phone in his hand back around so that the receiver was facing him.

“Fogs—” he started.

“--so cute. That’s so sweet—what’re you looking at, bozo, huh? That’s right, eyes front—Awwwww.”

This…was not a soothing voice. Unless Ganke was missing something here.

“You can’t tell him, Foggy, it’s a _surprise_ ,” Miles hissed.

Foggy was a person. Not a dog. Or a hitman. A real-life person. Someone _who just so happened_ to be married to the Man Without Fear.

 _He_ was the one who’d bought DD the sweater he’d worn in BT’s Ask Me Anything video, and yet somehow, he sounded like a guy who’d chase pigeons off his balcony and then spit. He sounded like he’d try to sell you a $1 gold watch outside Penn station.

Miles and Ned appeared to be operating under the illusion that this was ‘charming.’

“Surprise, yeah I got it, surprise,” Foggy confirmed over the what sounded like a busy street. “I can do surprises. How—I’m RIGHT HERE, ya fuckface, GOD. _People_. All this goddamn sidewalk and none of you can—no, hon, go on, it’s good. You’re good—”

Ganke wanted out of this. This dude talked like a gangster. Like old, old, old Hell’s Kitchen. These were not comic-book tones. If someone was going to do the audio description of their book, it should be in one of those Trans-Atlantic, old-timey newscaster voices.

“Foggy?” Miles repeated.

“Ah. Yeah, sorry, bud. There’s some circus-clown event at the place around the corner. How long is it? Your book I mean,” Foggy asked.

“He means techies,” Miles whispered to Ganke.

“Clowns,” Foggy said. “All of ‘em. Not a lick of respect for clear lines of passage. What if there was a fire, huh? Someone in a wheelchair? What’re they gonna do, send the poor sap into the street?”

Maybe BT had decided to live with Daredevil and his husband because they were both New York but concentrated, and he was homesick.

“It’s not very long, we’re going for 32 pages?” Miles said.

“Oh, very doable. When’ll it be done?”

“Hopefully by next Thursday?”

Foggy made thinking sounds.

“Can I get a Wednesday?” he asked.

Miles looked at Ganke with high eyebrows. Ganke wasn’t sure what to do, saying no would be rude, but saying yes meant that BT’s comic would be narrated by Mr. Fuhgeddaboudit.

He wasn’t sure.

“Maybe. We can send you the part we’ve already done by tomorrow?” Miles offered for both of them.

“Mm, you can send it,” Foggy said. “But I can’t open it until—hey, girl; yeah, I’m home. Where’s the other one?—Tuesday, is that okay?”

“Fogs?” a new voice said somewhere in the distance. “Is that you?”

“Just a sec,” Foggy said. He covered the phone and called back to the voice.

“Aha,” A deeper one called back. “What news! Eyes have arrived.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Foggy said. “Here, I’m gonna call you back, kid. Go ahead and send me what you’ve got— _is there blood on the floor?_ For fuck’s sake, Matthew, I’m gone twenty minutes—”

He hung up.

Ganke took a moment realize that the first voice calling out was familiar. Familiar as in, he’d listened to it on so many videos at that point. Blindspot. That was him. He was really living with those two. But that meant that Mr. ‘What News’ was Daredevil and that was…

Did they _both_ talk like that?

Miles laughed at his face.

Miles said that it was fine, everything was fine. DD and his husband had totally different professional voices that they did things in when they weren’t together or at home. He promised Ganke that the narration would not sound like they’d dug it out of a sewer in Hell’s Kitchen.

And even more importantly, Foggy was highly efficient guy.

Miles emailed him the pages and got a message back not twenty minutes later that said ‘received.’

Two hours later, while they were coming up on page 22 and no longer feeling so miserable, Miles got another email with ‘!!!’ in the subject line.

The email itself was kind of long. Foggy said that he was going to take some liberties, but he’d transcribed and read comic books before and not to worry. He also knew that Sam (SAM. Again. Everyone seriously called him just??? Sam?? BT, love yourself and get a longer name) had a collection of books on tape that he liked, but for some reason had had confiscated from him by DD, so Foggy had a feeling for a good style for him.

He mentioned something about sending back a test sample, and then said that he’d do it when his ‘two-faced giant cats’ were out of the house.

Ganke felt like he was starting to understand that for Foggy, insults were a type of affection. Kind of like how Ned threatened to strangle Spidey at every turn. Kind of like how he himself coped with Miles’s dumbassery on the daily by repeating his own words back to him.

“It’s ‘cause you’re all part of the same culture,” Miles informed him. “Vigilante’s bff is a whole role in itself. It takes a certain kind of person.”

“And I’m it?” Ganke scoffed.

“And you’re it.”

Foggy (Franklin. His actual name was Franklin, Miles said, but he’d never heard a single person call him that.) sent along a little clip later that night and Ganke’s hands twitched a little bit as he pressed play. Miles sat up and listened.

He was right.

Mr. Foggy-Franklin codeswitched on a dime.

He put on this way, way calmer voice when he started reading and slowed down and started describing the panels--each of them. Every one. He described what was happening with them. He read out the dialogue. It was a little jarring; it didn’t sound like any story-telling that Ganke had heard before, but once the clip ended, Ganke realized that he’d just started getting used to it.

“That,” Miles said, “Was _so cool_.”

“Pretty cool,” Ganke agreed.

Pages 25, 26, and 27 happened faster than expected over the next two days.

Only five more to go.

Miles had shown Ganke how to pick and fill in colors so he didn’t have to do all the work. The pages were coming together now.

“We need a cover,” he said.

“I don’t know if we’ll have time,” Miles said.

“Maybe a guest artist or something? You think we could ask a friend?” Ganke tried.

“Who?” Miles asked.

Well. Maybe?

**CAP:** ASHDFASDFASEFWEFAWEF

 **S4:** is that okay?

 **S4:** is this positive keysmashing? If you’re too busy that’s fine

 **CAP:** it is a sign from GOD

 **S4:** ?

 **CAP:** don’t worry about it. YES. Send me send me send me

 **S4:** …are you avoiding Sarge again?

 **CAP:** send me send me send me

 **S4:** you’re not good at lying, Steve

 **CAP:** I’m GREAT at lying. This is called ‘aversion.’ I’m following it up ‘diversion.’ It is a tactic, see? Yes? Excellent. I knew you would. thank you very much. gimme the thing

 **WS:** I’m gonna fucking skewer you as soon as I find you, you slippery motherfucker. It’s all over for you in 20 goddamn minutes so start prayin

 **CAP:** awwww I’m so scared. I simply cannot fathom what I’m going to do

 **CAP:** oh sorry. Wrong chat. Make me, asswipe

 **WS:** HHHHHHHHHHHHHhhh

“I think that’s a yes,” Miles said. “Cover art, acquired.”

Page 27?

Done.

Page 28?

Done.

Cover page—unexpectedly acquired in record time—damn, Cap was really putting his everything into driving Sergeant Barnes up a wall.

Wait.

“Is Sergeant Barnes part of the vigilante bff club?” Ganke asked Miles as Miles packed up his laptop for the day.

“I dunno, I think maybe Steve’s the bff in that situation,” Miles said. “He gives as good as he gets, though. Maybe they trade off.”

Huh.

“What if _I_ became a—”

“Ganke, don’t you finish that sentence.”

Page 29.

Done.

God, they were so close.

**BT:** I have been on this bus for YEARS

 **SM:** sorry boo

 **BT:** YEARS I say. I thought LA was hell on earth, but then you send me to INDIANA, Sensei??? What the fuck did I do to you?

 **DD:** back pain

 **BT:** Listen.

 **DD:** I’m listening

 **BT:** I didn’t mean to black out okay?

 **DD:** you are so heavy for one so small

 **BT:** yes. I am compact and strong.

 **SM:** awwww did you put him to bed, Red? Adorable.

 **BT:** er

 **DD:** something like that

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : drinking responsibly again, Invisi-boy?

 **BT:** maybe.

 **DD:** negative.

 **BT:** I did not get in a stranger’s car this time. That’s technically an improvement.

 **S2:** SAM

 **SM:** SAM

 **S3:** oh my GOD

 **BT:** I was fine!! I’m heavy remember???

 **DD:** can confirm. Less heavy when conscious. Can also confirm this.

 **BT:** see??? and I was only kidnapped for like, a block

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : oh that’s very good I wish someone would kidnap me for a block

 **DD:** I can make that happen for 50 cents wade

 **SM:** Sam bb, if you want to be carried, why didn’t you just say so? I will carry you ❤You aren’t heavy to me.

 **BT:** no thank you ❤

 **SM:** D:

 **SM:** why not?

 **BT:** don’t like to be carried.

 **DD:** if you were taller this wouldn’t be a problem for you.

 **BT:** did you send me to Indiana to get taller?

 **DD:** no I did not

 **BT:** then I do not care what you think

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : redthew my darling when do you arrive?

 **DD:** ?

 **DD:** I do not?

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : what

 **SM:** no?? you’re not coming??

 **DD:** no, you see, Hazel does not enjoy flying.

 **BT:** He’s been left behind because someone has to hold the fort and the last time sensei picked the real estate, apparently the office was shoe-box sized.

 **DD:** affordable

 **SM:** YOU picked that place, Matt?

 **DD:** what was wrong with it? It was cozy.

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : y’all didn’t have enough room to spread out a fuckin rug

 **DD:** hm yes perfect

 **S2:** this is the weirdest way of seducing your coworker that I’ve ever heard

 **DD:** he left me for his own apartment. what was I supposed to do?

 **SM:** retain healthy boundaries?

 **DD:** never

 **BT:** [taking notes]

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : wait. Red, about that kidnapping. Can I schedule it in advance?

Holy shit.

Only a few days left.

Page 30.

Page 31.

Page—

Page—

“It’s done,” Miles breathed at the computer screen between them.

Ganke could just about collapse, he was so tired.

“Not yet,” he said.

* * *

* * *

**BT:** I! Am! In NEW JERSEY

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : congrats?

 **BT:** LET ME OUT OF HERE

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : oh nvm

 **BT:** I can walk from here its fine Mr. Bus Driver. I’m reliable I’ve only ever been kidnapped for 1 block. I won’t be your problem as soon as I step off the bus Mr. Bus Driver, I promise I swear

 **DD:** it was more like one and a half blocks

 **BT:** what do you want from me?

 **DD:** patience.

 **BT:** I lost that in Pittsburgh. Try again.

 **DD:** patience and for your sister to stop calling me please.

 **BT:** ah. Yeah no. She thinks that you’ve murdered me and sent someone to dispose of my body parts in 13 different states.

 **DD:** on what basis has she formed these fantasies?

 **BT:** idk

 **DD:** do you really?

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : lol

 **S2:** Being on a bus for 3 days does things to you, Red. It’s not his fault.

 **DD:** Wade I need a favor

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : 👀

 **DD:** can you pick this one up from the bus station before he tries to make a break for it? If you deliver him safely to Karen’s place, I will give you six dollars and a very cool lighter.

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : deal

 **BT:** FUCK YOU OLD MAN

Glossy paper with an adjusted margin for binding. They had to pick a size. For once, Miles agreed to go with the classic size of just more than 10 inches by almost 7.

Ganke thought that their friendship would be smoother if Miles agreed with on him such things from the outset more often. Mr. Davis laughed at them as fought over that by the computer. He’d allowed them to buy ten copies. He didn’t need to know where the three of them were going. Miles covered for them and said they were going to ‘friends and mentors.’

The print shop was local and indulgent because they were kids, apparently. They said the books would be ready in a few days. In the meantime, Ganke and Miles had to find seaweed snacks. They were relying on Spidey to organize the meeting.

**SM:** Sam Sam Sam

 **BT:** peter peter peter

 **SM:** come to my hooooooooouse

 **BT:** I’m busyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

 **SM:** come be busy with meeeeee

 **BT:** I can’t, I have squares with me

 **DD:** don’t speak about your coworkers like that

 **BT:** I can’t, I have coworkers with meeee

 **BT:** I have to camouflage into their group. I am a square. Behold my squareness. I am an equilateral polygon. Look at me and all these right angels.

 **S2:** eyyyyy I’m a Right Angel

 **BT:** *angle

 **S2:** no you can’t take it back now. Too bad, sucker

Spidey assured them through text that BT _would_ fall for his charms eventually and would agree to come over to his apartment. As soon as Spidey wore him down, he’d let them know.

Ganke wasn’t sure where his confidence was coming from here. BT did not seem like he was breaking away from his square-people anytime soon. Miles said that this was unusual and either Spidey was doing a bad job being flirty or BT was doing a great job being uninterested.

Either way, Ganke caught himself clenching his jaw at least twice every hour.

**SM:** Sammmmm

 **BT:** peterrrrrrrrr

 **SM:** seriously come over I miss you

 **BT:** lol

Come _on_ , Spidey. Ganke was giving himself an ulcer watching and waiting like this. Miles sighed and held his temples next to him.

“He’s usually better than this,” he said. “I wonder what’s up with BT. He’s being unusually avoid-y. He almost always flirts back.”

Weird. Maybe he was sick? Visiting family?

**S2:** Sam go visit Spidey so that we can all stop watching him languish already

 **S3:** ^^

 **D2:** or don’t. I’m having a great time.

 **S2:** shut up Dave

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : I’m having fun too

 **S2:** shut up, dads.

Miles groaned and splayed fingers over his face.

The books were _beautiful_. Ganke couldn’t stop paging through them. They were real. He was holding one. He’d written these words. Miles, standing here next to him on this very sidewalk, had drawn all these pictures.

Were they perfect?

No. There were little draft lines all over and some of the dialogue was still awkward, no matter how many times Ganke had reworked it. Not to mention that Miles had flat out refused to draw Sun Wukong as a giant monkey, despite Ganke showing him a billion pictures.

But it was real. That was all that mattered.

Miles put down his copy and turned to Ganke with serious eyebrows.

“To Foggy,” he said, then over his shoulder, he called, “BYE DAD, THANKS, I LOVE YOU.”

And they were off.

Foggy was not what Ganke had expected.

Like.

At all.

He wasn’t particularly handsome, what with all those stress lines in his face and that weird hipster hair, but he wasn’t what Ganke would call plain either. It was more like he had loads of character in him. It was there in how he moved around jerkily with lines under his eyes, and how his eyebrows jumped all over the place while he talked. It was in how his voice wandered and lilted in a surprisingly comforting way as he wove through topics like he was water in a bumpy stream.

Maybe that was what Daredevil loved about him?

Like, it wasn’t a matter of looks; it was all about personality.

Huh.

Ganke’s brain shorted out as the guy waved his hand around and nattered on about transit and the heat like all old people did. He had laugh lines in his cheeks and, despite it being fairly warm for fall, he was wearing a cardigan that was too big for him.

 _The_ Karen Page popped out around him about halfway through Mr. Foggy-Franklin’s greeting and was inhumanly stunning in person. Ganke lost words as she waved them all into her apartment and started taking mismatching glasses out of her cupboard.

“Kare—breathe. Chill. They’re here for two seconds,” Foggy said like he’d known _The_ Karen Page his whole life.

“I can’t chill,” Karen Page said with a plastic jug from the fridge in her hand.

“I know and love this about you,” Foggy said with calming palms stroking the air in front of her. “But I am literally just going to give them a jumpdrive.”

“I can get a jumpdrive,” Karen Page announced. “You want a fresh one or do you mind it stolen?”

Foggy stared at her for a long moment.

“You and Matt still deserve each other,” he said. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back— _Don’t_ move, Karen, I’m watching you.”

Foggy came back with another unfairly pretty lady on his heels. This lady had dark hair and was shorter than Ms. Page. She was very excited. Foggy held a blue flashdrive in his hand above his head and swerved around Ms. Page to put it securely in the center of Ganke’s palm. He closed Ganke’s fingers around it and patted his knuckles twice.

“The deed is done,” he announced. “Secrets are secure from even _you nosy rats_.”

The ladies had the grace to sneer at him simultaneously.

“I wash my hands of thee,” Foggy said, shooing Miles and Ganke away. “Go, go. Before the witches descend.”

The brown-haired lady draped herself across his shoulders.

“It’s too late,” she lamented. “You need a hero, Mr. Nelson.”

Ms. Page picked up on the gig in a flash and threw her arms on top of the other lady’s.

“A herooooo,” she moaned.

Foggy’s eye twitched.

“I’ve had enough of heroes. I’m calling Frank,” he decided.

“Who’s Frank?” Ganke asked on the hike back south.

“Frank Castle?” Miles offered.

Oh.

 _Oh_.

**SM:** SAMMY IM DYIN MAN ITS BEEN DAYS

 **BT:** JESUS CHRIST YOURE PERSISTENT

 **SM:** yes ; w ;

 **BT:** I’m busy. I have not stopped being busy. I have been busy the whole time I have been here.

 **SM:** come be busy with me

 **BT:** I c a n ‘ t

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : w h y n o t

 **SM:** yeah why not??

 **BT:** can you read?

 **SM:** yes?

 **BT:** scroll up.

 **SM:** Sammyyyyy

 **BT:** for FUCKS sake

 **BT:** fine

 **S2:** omg

 **S2:** SPIDEY YOU DID IT

 **S3:** wow!

 **D2:** 👏👏👏👏👏

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

 **S2:** **👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽**

 **SM:** thanks boo ❤ let me buy you dinner. Pizza on me ❤

 **BT:** you aggravate me and I will steal your knuckles while you sleep.

 **SM:** aww. See you at 7.

“Is this charm?” Ganke whispered.

“I don’t know,” Miles whispered back. “But it's showtime.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't resist doing a page from the comic ❤ I was just dying to see Sam with Sun Wukong (what is this?? To see content we must create it???)
> 
> Sorry for bombarding y'all. Like I said: emotional support fic.
> 
> [Image I.D. Blindspot stands beside Sun Wukong, the Monkey King from Journey to the West in front of two solid black panels. The Monkey King, who is a monkey wearing red armor with ornate buckles, wields a red staff over his head. He comes up to Blindspot’s chest. He shouts, “Do you have the nerve to ignore the great Sun Wukong? Hey! Pay attention, Zebra-boy, I’m talking to you!” while Blindspot, dressed his his black and white suit with its asymmetrical stripes on the limbs, ignores him. Blindspot is poised for action with his legs tensed in a low crouch, listening to something in the distance and facing the right side of the frame. ‘Wait,’ he thinks in a white thought bubble over Sun Wukong’s head. ‘What was that?’ he asks Sun Wukong outloud. End I.D.]


	7. roof tiles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was a scrabble, then a crunch, and then a pinwheel of movement that turned into a body when its hands hit the other side of the wall.
> 
> It was a man. A guy wearing an oversized black cardigan with blood pouring from what looked like his ear, staining the whole side of his face red.

Ganke had to get ahold of himself. He had to be slick. He had to be cool—mysterious, but not too mysterious. Artistic, but not too Miles-like.

“Dude, you’re not gonna have any hair left if you keep doing that.”

He needed fewer opinions in this room while he was at it.

“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, Miles,” Ganke said to his own reflection in the mirror.

Miles huffed in the doorway and went back to his phone.

“If you don’t make it weird, it won’t be,” he said. “And this? This is making it weird.”

It wasn’t.

“Yeah, it is. Anyways, knowing Sam, he’s gonna roll up in a hoodie and painter jeans and then you’re gonna look overdressed.”

Was it the bowtie?

“It’s _definitely_ the bowtie.”

Damnit.

Miles moaned into the bed, but Ganke needed him to just chill out already. It only took an hour to get to Spidey’s place in Queens. They had a full other one to spare.

Miles rolled over and moaned at the ceiling next.

“Ganke, you’re not _listening_ to me,” he said. “I told you once and I’ll tell you again, BT isn’t going to _care_.”

Say what you want, Morales, Ganke had seen the videos. BT was suave as hell. He was always wearing oversized clothes and artfully tight, yet loose pants. Even his boots were cool. They had all these little studs in them and these laces that looked like they’d been broken and retied loads of times.

Miles flopped over enough to glare.

“We’re gonna be late to our own opening and it’s gonna be all your fault,” he sniffed.

Ganke settled on a black t-shirt with the most distressed of all his jeans. He was going to go for the fake Jordans, but Miles was already wearing his red Jordans, so that was immediately vetoed. He decided on the burgundy vans for a little hint of color. Miles was practically laying on him at that point, shaking his phone and making whale calls about the train schedule, so Ganke relented and told Mom and Auntie that he’d be home late; he and Miles were going to go to their friends’ house for a movie party.

Mom told him to keep an eye on his text messages and to tell her when he left his friend’s apartment. She told Miles to do the same for his mom, and then they were free.

Pavement heaven.

“WE’RE LATE,” Miles screeched, dragging Ganke down the sidewalk.

Ganke’s heart sped up with every jostle on the train and deep breathing wasn’t helping. Miles’s squinty-face wasn’t either.

So rude. So incredibly rude.

Ganke gestured at him to knock it off and got a violent one in return. Miles went back to his phone, then his face changed.

Ganke’s heart dropped.

“What happened?” he asked, fighting his way through the mass of bodies to get next to him. Miles looked up at him with huge eyes and pulled at his shirt sleeve until they were both pressed against the wall of the carriage with his phone between them.

**BT:** asM sory gona be LATE

 **SM:** ? you’re gonna be late?

 **BT:** ys

 **SM:** you okay?

 **BT:** NO

 **S2:** BT was that you just now???

 **BT:** YES

 **S2:** Do you need backup??

 **BT:** hlep HELO

 **BT:** HELP

 **SM:** on it

 **SM:** where are you?

 **BT:** flushing?? Somehwere in flushing??

 **SM:** I’m there

Miles jerked around and started counting stops.

**S4:** we’re 20 min out BT can you hold on?

 **BT:** AHAHAHAHAHAH NO

 **S4:** what’s happening

 **S2:** Bullseye. it’s all over the news Sam where’s your suit?? He can’t hit you if he can’t see you

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : kid get the fuck underground

 **BT:** Im TRYNG

 **BT:** But its all TRAINS

 **BT:** how does he even know who I am???

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : Get down and stay down and don’t so much as breathe. Red where the fuck are you??

 **BT:** he’s not picking up his phone I think hes out for FUCKCIN TRIATHLON

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : jesus Christ matthew this is why we don’t do extracurriculars

 **SM:** I’m headed your way, Sam. 10 min just hang on.

 **SM:** sam?

 **SM:** Sam????

 **S3:** I’m calling

 **S2:** don’t call he’s hiding

 **SM:** Bitsy I need you on standby. Sam I need your location, send me a pin

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : I’ve got red on the line someone nabbed his phone

 **SM:** what???

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : this was planned

 **S2:** someone’s targeting Sam??

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : Someone knows who he is

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : Red’s sending Elektra

 **SM:** I’ve got this we don’t need Elektra. I just need a pin. SAM. Where are you? I need your location man

 **SM:** SAM

Holy shit. The train shuddered hard and shook and the lights flickered all the way down the car. A silence fell heavy over the seats. Ganke’s heart pulsed for a whole different reason.

People started murmuring.

A hand grabbed his shoulder and he turned to see Miles looking like a ghost with wide eyes.

“We need to get out of here,” he hissed.

“How?” Ganke asked. “We’re in a tunnel.”

“Somehow,” Miles snapped. “Help me find a way out.”

Hhhhhh. Okay, okay. Be calm. Be chill.

Miles took in a sharp breath and Ganke turned back to him.

“What?” he snapped.

Miles flicked his eyes up at him and then showed him his phone.

**BT:** cant

 **SM:** where are you

 **BT:** h

 **SM:** SAM. I’m coming where are you man I can’t just

 **BT:** Well well well

 **BT:** now this is new. Awwwwwwww look you all have a chat!

 **SM:** Let him go Bullseye

 **BT:** lol new number who dis?

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : heya fuckface I see they let you outta group early

 **BT:** OOOOOOoooo I know you

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : what’re you doin’ in queens, huh? Ran out of gals with no standards to fuck on staten island?

 **BT:** yeah p much. Hey is this little one yours, DP? He’s kinda cute. Reminds me of someone I used to know

No. No, no, no.

That was—

Bullseye was a force of nature. He had his own comics.

They were just as terrible as he was and their fans were the kind of people who laughed at videos of animal abuse and tagged him in them at his abandoned twitter handle.

Ganke was sick.

Miles’s breath came a little ragged.

**S4:** leave him alone he’s got nothing to do with you

 **BT:** oh look a gnat

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : lay off kiddo, this one’s impenetrable.

 **SM:** Call me, shit for brains

 **BT:** me?? Call the itsy bitsy spider? Why Deadpool, I thought you had a no-contact order out on this one?

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : friend your info’s ten years dead lol you’re so out of touch

 **BT:** trends come back around

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : you know what you’re not wrong. mom jeans are back in this season. hey maybe you can give the old trenchcoat another swing. This time you might look only half like the pedophile you did before

 **BT:** so rude!

 **SM:** 👍

Miles’s shoulders sagged and he pressed a hand over his heart. Ganke stared at him urgently.

“What’s happened?” he hissed.

“Spidey found the location,” Miles whispered back.

Thank _god_.

“What do we do now?” Ganke asked.

Miles’s eyes flicked between him and the front of the carriage. It started moving again with a shake and a judder.

“Get ready to run,” Miles said.

The doors opened and they flew out from the crowd to get to the next platform. Both of them begged the next train to come outloud, practically chanting until it did. They rushed onto it and Miles clenched his fists tight and breathed in and out slowly.

They crashed out of the train a stop too early and practically ran through the barriers. Miles took the stairs at the speed of light and it was all Ganke could do to keep up with him. Out at street level, he caught up just long enough to catch sight of Miles looking around and then scrambling back to grab Ganke’s arm and pull hard.

Red and blue blurred past over head and they stumbled back in the middle of the pavement to watch Spidey launch another line of web to carry him through his sideways speed-arcs.

He meant business. Ganke could see his arm muscles bulging through his suit as he ripped back hard on the line to keep himself moving.

“Come on, they’re that way,” Miles said, spinning around with a fistful of Ganke’s shirt to pull him after.

They chased after Spidey at street level for four blocks before he crash-landed and rolled across one of the roofs overhead and popped up sprinting. He vanished out of sight and Miles changed course and jerked Ganke down two blocks worth of side streets before stumbling into a dead-end alley.

Ganke panted. Miles spun around, surveying the tops of the buildings.

“What now?” Ganke gasped.

Miles jerked his way.

“I feel something,” he said.

Feel something? In the Spidey sense?

“Are you pinging?” Ganke asked.

Miles carried on turning in a slow circle, his shoulders hunching further and further with every rotation.

“Not good, not good,” he murmured. “Not good, not good, not—”

There was a sound and Ganke followed Miles’s sudden movement to face the dead end wall in the alley directly across from them. Ganke found himself being pulled back by the back of his collar and Miles crouched between him and the oncoming noise.

There was a scrabble, then a crunch, and then a pinwheel of movement that turned into a body when its hands hit the other side of the wall.

It was a man. A guy wearing an oversized black cardigan with blood pouring from what looked like his ear, staining the whole side of his face red.

He hit concrete with his hands first and threw his bent legs back hard enough to lift his chest off the ground. He landed on his feet with his arms splayed out hard and defensive, crouched low.

Blood dripped off the line of stringy bracelets that crawled up his right arm.

“SAM.”

It took Ganke a second to realize what had just happened, but by the time he did, the man with his bracelets had twisted around.

“Miles?”

Ganke knew that voice.

Miles rushed past him.

“You’re okay,” he gasped, catching ahold of the guy’s arm and pulling. “Spidey’s got it, we’ve gotta clear out.”

“Thank _Christ_ ,” Blindspot—the honest to god, real, true and honest, Blindspot said.

He let Miles pull him like he’d just been tugging Ganke along.

“Where’s Bullseye?” Miles asked him breathlessly.

“I don’t know,” Blindspot said. “I lost him about three hundred yards back. Can’t see for shit right now.”

Can’t see?

Ganke looked—not up, like he’d expected—but over and almost gagged.

Blindspot had no eyes. Just black holes where—wait, were those rings?

“What do you mean, you can’t see?” Miles snapped.

“I meant what I said and I said what I meant, kid, what else do ya want from me? We don’t have time, I know he’s coming, we’ve gotta _move_ before--”

They were rings. Bright blue burning rings shaped in perfect circles like irises.

“Oh, _yoo hoo_.”

Ganke’s spine spasmed in horror at the sound of the new voice. 

“Where _ever_ are you going, little bird?” Bullseye’s sticky, smarmy drawl cooed over the top of the roof. Blindspot sneered up his way hard enough to show teeth. Bullseye grinned down at him.

“You know,” he said, advancing. “You don’t look anything like your Papa.”

“Go,” Blindspot told Miles and Ganke without turning back. “Go.”

“No, I’ve got you,” Miles said.

“Take your friend and _go_ , Bitsy,” Blindspot ordered. “I’ll never forgive myself if—”

“So _chatty_ ,” Bullseye interrupted. “Sooooo unlike your daddy, Tweety-bird. Hey, do you think he’d cry if I put you in a box? Mahogany, maybe? Or bamboo, perhaps? You look like a bamboo kind of boy.”

Blindspot’s lip twitched. Bullseye started making this horrible kissy noises.

“He’ll kill you,” Miles hissed.

Blindspot dropped his chin. Ganke couldn’t see his face anymore, but that jaw looked hard as steel.

“Then so be it,” BT said.

Ganke didn’t even see the tile coming. It hit the ground and exploded into shards only feet away from him and he couldn’t contain the gasp. Bullseye cackled. Miles pushed Ganke even further behind him.

“I’m not leaving you to die,” Miles said.

BT jerked just enough for Ganke to see one blazing blue eye trained on him and Miles.

“Then leave me to live,” he said.

And just like that, he’d vanished. And also just like that, Ganke found himself being dragged back the way they came out of the alley. Miles’s grip was punishing.

“STAY HERE,” Miles said, practically flinging him out onto the main road.

Ganke couldn’t even get a word in before he was gone again. All that was left was the sound of traffic screeching and confused people asking about where Spiderman had gone.

Five minutes. Miles had been gone for five whole minutes.

Ganke’s hands shook hard as he checked his phone again.

His throat hurt. It was dry. He couldn’t swallow. He checked his phone again.

Five minutes. Nearly six. Long enough to get him. Long enough to bleed out. Long enough to die.

He couldn’t stay here, he had to—

“MOVE.”

His body moved on its own.

A mass of bodies moving at lightening speed flew past him and crashed into the street. People screamed and recoiled. Traffic screeched to a halt around Spidey’s fire-engine red suit as his torso reared up to build power for that elbow that came up with him.

The elbow went down in a stroke almost too fast to see and the asphalt around Bullseye’s ear cracked and cratered in.

Ganke felt the impact under the soles of his feet.

People gasped as one on either side of the sidewalk. Spidey didn’t move.

“Like I said,” his voice growled out. “Try. Again.”

Ganke was close enough to hear the whistling, high sound of Bullseye’s rasping. Spidey waited. The whole street waited.

Then Bullseye cackled.

“You’re so _big_ now, Spider-boy,” he sung between gasps. “Don’t remember you being this heav—”

Bullseye froze at the long, broken pipe suddenly staring right into his eye.

Blindspot’s right arm was nearly as red as Spidey’s suit.

His eyes were gone, covered by a familiar black mask. A hand touched Ganke’s shoulder and he whipped back to see Miles. Just Miles. A few knicks and cuts on his forehead and cheek. Smiling.

“Stand down,” Blindspot said out in the street.

Spidey removed himself from Bullseye’s chest and stood to take his place next to BT, chin high, chest huge. Bullseye stared up at both of them, then at the pipe right in his face. His lips twisted and he began to writhe.

“I _said,_ ” BT ordered at full voice like a gunshot, “Stand. Down.”

Bullseye started to wrap fingers around the edge of the pipe, but BT had had enough of him. He jerked it back and swung it back high. His legs slid back hard and fast to get some force behind the incoming motion and someone screamed as the makeshift staff came down.

Ganke crushed his eyes closed.

The impact never came.

He opened his eyes slowly, painfully, to see BT stood over the body in the street with the pipe only inches from his face once again. Bullseye’s chest rose and fell rapidly. BT didn’t move.

“The enemy of my teacher is my enemy,” Blindspot said into the silence between them.

The sound of sirens broke through the air.

“But I’m not your judge or jury.”

He pulled back the pipe.

“And you don’t scare me.”

Bullseye realized just as it dawned on Ganke what was happening; he swore at Blindspot and tried to get up, but Spidey took a step forward and brought him back down with a foot on his shoulder.

“You’re just as rotten as he is, little bird,” Bullseye snarled as he struggled under Spidey’s foot. “And you’ll die, _burning_ , _gasping_ , just like him. Just you wait. You’ll see—”

“I don’t think I will, actually,” BT said much more lightly. “Bye now.”

Flushing was a police-fest not two minutes later. BT and Spidey bounced the second an officer came within spitting range of them. Ganke’s legs, for some reason, yearned to follow them, but Miles’s grasp on his shoulder tightened.

“Play it cool,” he said evenly. “Two minutes, then we walk to the station. Breath out, then in.”

Okay.

Okay, sure, why not?

His legs shook on the train. He had to sit down. Miles slipped into the seat next to him in the nigh-empty car.

Ganke was rattling too badly to appreciate just how empty it was. Miles’s shoulders rose slowly next to him and an arm found its way to lay heavily over Ganke’s shoulders.

“So,” he said just softly enough for the people texting on their phones by the door to hear, “You finally met Blindspot. How does it feel?”

It felt like he was a hot air balloon floating too high.

It felt like he’d just survived a bungee jump over an ocean.

It felt like his hands would never stop sweating and his armpits would never be cool ever again.

 _That’s_ how it felt.

Miles beamed at him.

“You hold onto that,” he said.

Oh, Ganke was going to. For the rest of his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rewrites this for the 4th time.  
> rewrites this for the 5th time.  
> rewrites the next chapter for the 6th time. 
> 
> (I'm gonna get there, y'all, I promise)


	8. mice and lions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So you didn’t have the chance to give it to him?” Cap clarified, flipping through the comic in his hand.

“So you didn’t have the chance to give it to him?” Cap clarified, flipping through the comic in his hand.

“Nah,” Ganke said while Miles presented Mr. Wilson with Ganke’s copy of the comic to read through while Cap paged through their household’s.

“That’s too bad,” Cap said. “There’s so much validation that comes with seeing someone’s expression when they receive a gift.”

Yeah well, it wasn’t the worst thing ever. Ganke had gotten to see the real deal in action, after all. That had been badass. He had all these lines he wanted to use in the next issue now, and they _had_ to add BT’s stringy bracelets to his design. They had to.

Cap smiled at him.

“You’re a good kid, Ganke,” he said.

Aw, thanks, man.

“Whaddya mean he ain’t seen it??” Sergeant Barnes’s deep voice demanded in the kitchen.

Cap sat up and rolled his eyes.

“Buck,” he said. “It’s fine. These things do happen.”

“These things do happen, my ass,” Sergeant Barnes said. “Y’all get your coats. Winter’s gonna find you mouse.”

Mr. Wilson burst out laughing.

“You?” he said, still hidden from Ganke’s view. “ _You’re_ gonna go out and find the _invisible_ mouse? I swear to god, JB, you’re becoming that damn cat.”

“He is an _apex predator_ , thank you, and I wasn’t talking to you,” Sergeant Barnes snapped. “Stevie. Up and at ‘em. This is mission go-time.”

Cap scoffed from the couch.

“No thanks,” he said. “I just got this book I wanna read and you know how me and them books are, Buck. Can’t be helped, just get my nose stuck in the binding and—”

Sergeant Barne’s fishtail of hair finally appeared from around the corner alongside a set of narrow, quartz-clear eyes.

“You’re operating under the impression that this decision is negotiable,” he said.

Ganke was pretty sure most spy missions involved at least two willing parties. Therefore, he was pretty sure that that meant that whatever Cap was doing with them now probably met the definition of coercion.

Not that Sergeant Barnes cared.

He had a mission and his mission was finding an invisible man in a city of millions. He was not afraid. Cap let him do his murder strut and lagged behind with Miles and Ganke wearing a beanie and huge chunky glasses, which did a surprisingly good job of making him look next to nothing like Mr. Clean Cut Captain America.

Enter: Captain Stealth Mode.

“I’m sorry about this,” Cap said.

“It’s okay,” Miles said. “I was just gonna tell BT to meet us in Chinatown, but this seems like it’s much more exciting.”

Cap sighed.

“No, not that,” he said. “I mean I’m sorry for what’s about to happen.”

Oh? And what was about to happen?

Cap gazed upon them pityingly.

Ganke had to say, for an international spy-former-terrorist, Sergeant Barnes was very much not good at going from point A to point B. Chinatown was definitely not this far north.

“Hush,” the man himself snapped back at Ganke pointing this out to Cap in a whisper. “I know what I’m doin’, I’ve been doin’ it for a goddamn century.”

Uh-huh. Ganke had no doubt that he had been. He was just missing that one vital bit of information that was that BT was Chinatown’s vigilante. Finding him more north of there wasn’t going to work.

“Ye of little faith,” Sergeant Barnes labeled him. “We’re not here for the kid. We’re here for information.”

Information?

Cap scratched at his hair under his hat.

“You’re serious,” he said.

“Go take a hike, I can’t have you ruinin’ my street cred,” Sergeant Barnes ordered him.

Cap blinked and then shrugged.

“I’m gettin’ a coffee. You two want a coffee?”

Cap was of the opinion that espionage did not make young men grow like caffeine drinks did. He told Miles and Ganke to pick whatever they wanted while they all waited for his idiot somewhere that didn’t smell like piss and soured beer.

Ganke appreciated him. After yesterday, he imagined Bullseye crawling over every alley wall.

The café that Cap picked for them to take refuge in wasn’t very busy; it seemed like it was a local joint with a few old men and grandmas watching little kids playing around in it. He parked them at a table in between the front door and the counter and settled himself in the booth facing the windows.

He apologetically called it an ‘old habit.’ It took Ganke two sips of mocha to realize that he meant that he wanted to have clear sightlines to all of the exits in the place.

Miles took the opportunity to harangue Cap about some kind of painting thing that Ganke tuned out in favor of people watching.

A lady with green pants opened the door with a ring of its bells; she walked past them up to the counter. A man was sitting outside with a giant, mop-looking creature masquerading as a dog.

Cap’s eyes flicked back and forth between Miles and the counter, when all of the sudden he scooted to the edge of his bench and stood up, nearly knocking the lady with the green pant’s carton of coffees right out of her hands.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” he apologized, holding his hands over hers to steady them.

There was a pause as the woman stared up at him.

“Oh my god, _Steve_?” she said.

Cap pulled back in ‘surprise.’

“Ms. McDuffie,” he said. “You’re back in New York?”

Miles’s jaw dropped.

“I am,” Ms. McDuffie—the dark-haired lady that Ganke had seen with Foggy that one time—said. “Oh my god, look at that hat. Are you on a mission?”

Cap laughed.

“Something like that,” he said. “Hey, are you accompanied?”

Ms. McDuffie cocked her head and then laughed.

“Am I chaperoned, do you mean?” she said. “No, never. You know me better than that, Mr. Rogers.”

Cap shrugged sheepishly. Ms. McDuffie finally seemed to notice Miles with the quirk of her eyebrow.

“You, on the other hand, appear to be in the presence of greatness,” she said.

“Sure am,” Cap hummed. “Well, I was. Then Buck decided to go hide in the shrubbery again.”

Ganke was floored.

This was what people meant when they said people were ‘charming.’ This was it. They were witnessing it. Cap was making Foggy’s friend smile all over the place and he was smiling back like it was easy.

“Ah,” he said, like he’d just remembered something. “Actually, while I’ve got you, I was wondering if Franklin was available for a quick chat?”

“God, call him Foggy already, Steve,” Ms. McDuffie said. “You guys have known each other long enough. I’m sure he is, I just left him and Karen playing a game of ‘we can’t afford it’ on 46th.”

“No shit?” Cap said with fake-fake- _fake_ surprise. “Y’all are shopping real estate?”

“Sure are,” Ms. McDuffie said. “Turns out our collective heart yearns for this hellhole on the daily, even with the bay right outside our window.”

Cap smiled huge and white.

“I know how that feels,” he said so honestly that Ganke almost wanted to gag.

Ms. McDuffie was done. Hook, line, and sinker.

“I know you do,” she said gently. “Hey, come on, if you’ve got a minute, I could use someone who can arbitrate world peace.”

“Well, I don’t know about world peace, but I can give it a shot,” Cap said. “You mind if I bring the kids? We’re on a field trip and our scout leader has abandoned us.”

Ms. McDuffie bounced her eyebrows once at Miles. He looked away.

“Totally fine with me,” she said.

Ms. McDuffie lead them straight into a warzone.

“Foggy, Foggy, _Foggy_ , don’t think of the security deposit,” Karen Page was saying in an empty office space with pink walls, “Think of the comfort of your clients.”

Foggy attempted to extract his face from her grip.

“Oh, I’m thinkin’,” he said. “I’m thinkin’ this is a fuckin’ _cell_. Bubblegum hell, Karen.”

“A coat of paint and you’re golden,” Karen argued.

“A coat of—do you see this shit?”

“Friends, countrymen, lend me your ears,” Ms. McDuffie announced. “I bring coffee and a man no one would refuse a lapdance from.”

Cap waved.

Karen and Foggy broke up immediately.

“Steve,” Foggy said, because apparently he knew everyone in the entire city. “God, how are you? It’s been ages.”

Cap returned his hug.

“You’re lookin’ a little thin, there, Mr. Nelson,” he said.

Foggy scowled.

“Can’t escape the reminder, Matt’s new tactic is to keep feeding me frozen Coolwhip,” he said. “What brings you to Hell’s Kitchen?”

Steve hummed.

“Paranoid ex-soldier. About 5’10,” might actually be a human raccoon, the jury’s still out,” he said.

Foggy laughed.

“My favorite client,” he said. “Or perhaps, ex-client?”

“You’d do that to us, Mr. Nelson?” Cap asked all dramatically.

The front door opened and Ganke turned and his heart froze mid-beat.

Three people were there, all Asian folks, all talking at the same time about the merits of putting an entire hamburger on the straw of a Bloody Mary.

BT had swapped his huge black sweater from the day before out for a neat gray shirt that buttoned all the way up to a high Mandarin-style collar. It hid all his bruises, scrapes, and scratches. He’d shaken all his hair out so that it was all over the place and covering the mark at his temple where Bullseye had nearly killed him.

“Ah, admin, thank god,” Foggy said. “Tell this woman that we cannot possibly live in a more pink office than we already do.”

The two ladies next to BT looked directly up at the Peptobismol-colored ceiling.

“Mr. Murdock will love it,” one of them said.

Miles waved a little at BT. He, on the other hand, looked like a deer in the headlights, and Ganke realized that his eyes were just eyes.

They weren’t black and blue anymore, rather black and white. Puffy along the top lid and narrow. Mr. Nelson noticed his bristling shoulders and glanced between him and Miles, then between him and Steve.

“Ah,” he said. “Steve, let me introduce you. These are our new staff from back west; they’ve very kindly come out to help us decide on a place for the new firm. This is Achara, our admin assistant, Leilani, our office manager, and Sam, our paralegal.”

Paralegal?

“It’s nice to meet you,” Cap said. “Sorry for the uh, I guess we can call it a ‘disguise.’ It’s for the tourists, mostly.”

One of the girls looked like she was going to faint. Ganke imagined that this was not the first time Cap had encountered this reaction.

“It’s nice to meet you,” the other lady, the one with more hair than everyone in the room combined, said. She shook Cap’s hand. She sounded very Californian.

“Likewise. Oh, I should introduce these two myself,” Cap said. “This is Miles and this is Ganke. They’re from my parts down in Brooklyn. We’ve been doing some work on a comic.”

BT gave Miles an expression that seemed to somehow convey confusion and promise pain at the same time. When Cap looked away BT jerked a finger across his throat in a slashing gesture. Miles covered his mouth in mock shock then flipped up a bird, and Ganke almost slugged him in the shoulder before Cap turned back and asked Foggy if he had a moment to chat.

Foggy said that he did, of course. He accepted his coffee from Kirsten and pointed a finger at Karen.

“This is a no from me,” he said.

He left.

BT cleared his throat.

“Sorry, all. I just need to go check my email to see what the phone folks said,” he said, sounding amazingly normal and calm. “I’ll be right back.”

Miles gave him a sassy eyebrow.

“I’ll come with,” he piped up.

Karen smirked at Ganke and made a little shooing gesture. Ms. McDuffie suddenly started talking about lighting to the other ladies way louder than necessary given that there was only one window in the place.

Ganke took the hint. He chased after Miles.

He caught up with Miles, who in turn was nearly walking on BT’s heels as the guy aggressively made tracks down the block.

“What are you _doing_ , Miles?” BT demanded out of nowhere. “Did Peter never talk to you about a cover?? Make a note of it, here, now. You need to maintain a _cover_. That’s c-o-v—”

“We made something for you,” Miles said.

BT didn’t stop in his pace. He was amazingly smooth in his step, almost cat-like. His footfalls barely made a sound.

It was so cool.

“I don’t have time right now, my fuckin’—” BT cut himself off and crowded both Miles and Ganke into the mouth of some random alley.

“My coworkers are _right there_ ,” he hissed. “Leilani? Fine, whatever. She’s already done the whole deal—but Achara? Achara can _not_ know who I am or what I do. She can’t. I’ll fucking perish if she does, are we clear?”

“So perish,” Miles said.

Ganke grabbed him in horror.

“I’m sorry about him,” he blurted out. “He’s just stupid, we don’t want to rat you out to your coworkers, I swear.”

And just like that, he found himself with Blindspot’s complete and undivided attention.

Holy shit.

“I don’t know you,” BT said with a frown.

Be cool, be cool, be cool, be cool.

“I’m Ganke,” Ganke said. “Ganke Lee. I’m Miles’s best friend since forever. I’m—uh, I’m sorry he’s a jerk in forty-five different ways all the time, but more than that, we, uh—he’s not lying. We made you a—”

Ganke could have died.

It sounded so lame.

It sounded like they were a couple of six-graders drawing pictures for Tony Stark’s kid’s gallery.

“—a comic,” he finished in a squeak.

A silence began to unravel between them. It felt like dropping the end of a rolled up ladder into a bottomless pit.

Ganke was too embarrassed to look up.

“A comic?”

God. Nevermind. End this. End it all. It didn’t matter.

“Yeah,” Miles said brightly. “We tried to give it to you yesterday, but then the world exploded, so we slept on it.”

Miles, _shut_ up.

“You made a comic? For me?”

Ganke frowned. That tone didn’t sound angry. He peeked up and found BT’s black and white eyes framed by thick eyebrows that were bent in the opposite direction of angry. BT’s right hand hovered over his heart.

“That’s—you—that’s so sweet,” he said. “Thank you. Oh my god, that’s so—I don’t even know what to say to that.”

Miles beamed.

“I know,” he said. “You’re speechless in the face of our magnificence.”

BT’s eyebrows twitched.

“I was,” he said. “Losin’ it fast, though.”

Miles, SHUT UP.

“Here, uh. We made you a copy,” Ganke said in a rush, shrugging off his backpack and digging through it with shaking hands for the glossy cover.

“You printed it and everything?” BT asked.

“Yes,” Ganke said, holding the volume out. He hoped BT didn’t notice the finger prints.

He didn’t seem to. He accepted the volume after a moment of hesitation with both hands. Ganke almost felt bad for being relieved at the slackness of his jaw.

“You drew this?” BT asked in shock.

Miles hummed.

“Not the one on front,” he said. “But everything else inside. Ganke wrote the story. The whole thing was his idea.”

BT’s gaze shot up to Ganke and it was a little like getting skewered with a kabob stick.

“Why?” BT asked. “I don’t know you. We’ve never met.”

Ah.

Well.

It was just—

“I watch your Youtube videos and follow your twitter and stuff. And, I dunno. It’s like, when everyone goes around naming their favorite heroes and stuff, you never hear any Asian names—and then when you do, it’s always so-and-so the ninja or so-and-so the silent, background martial artist,” Ganke said in a rush. “But you’re like—not like that? Even though you’re a martial artist, you’re funny and stuff. You talk a lot. And, I dunno—I guess I talk a lot, too, even if my mom says it’s rude. So I, uh. I just—I thought that since everyone else had a comic, you deserved one, so that other people would know that Asian superheroes don’t have to be so stoic all the time and that kind of thing. They can be cool and read as Asian without having to be a ninja or whatever.”

He peeked up and found Blindspot’s eyebrows doing their bendy thing again.

“I’m literally about to cry,” BT clarified out of nowhere. He waved at his eyes. “These things just dry the fuck out of my face—Kiddo, you’re so _good_. That’s—You’re—I don’t even know what to say. You put all that work into it and you didn’t have to—Okay, one second, give me—Jesus.”

Ganke couldn’t help but feel something skimming along the line of smug as Blindspot turned to the side and did something to his face.

He came back blinking hard and painfully with his hand cupped.

The blue-black eyes had returned.

BT wore contacts to cover them up.

Huh.

His waterlines looked mad irritated now and the black sclera around his glow-stick irises was glossy.

“See? Tears,” BT said, waving at his face. “Full spectrum. That’s what I’m experiencing right now.”

Awww.

BT’s lips quirked up a little in one of the corners, then he went rigid and searched around him.

“Listen,” he said, “I will read this.” He shook the comic. “I promise. But right now I’ve gotta head back. Thank you. I’ll read it tonight, I promise, and maybe before I leave town again we can get lunch or—”

“Mouse.”

Every line of BT’s body went taut. He lashed out behind with a fist faster than you could stay ‘go,’ but Sergeant Barnes caught the incoming blow in the dead center of his hand.

BT froze and slowly looked up to his face.

Sergeant Barnes grinned.

“You really live up to your name don’t you, Blindspot?” he said.

There was a pregnant pause as BT’s eyes traveled from Sergeant Barnes’s face to his hair to the shining metal fingers glinting around his knuckles.

Ganke could see the moment when he made the decision to stand his ground.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, man, but you’re right up in my face right now,” BT nearly growled.

“You don’t?” Sergeant Barnes asked. “Funny. It’s almost like you’re—”

“Let me go,” BT ordered. “ _Now_.”

Sergeant Barnes studied him with his fingers still clasped around BT’s fist. After a moment, he released them. BT tore his arm back and put himself between Ganke and Miles and Sarge’s hulking frame.

“You’ve got good instincts,” Sergeant Barnes said in approval. “And guts. Not many people would dare to take that tone with the Winter Soldier.”

BT said nothing. Ganke couldn’t see his face.

“Cut the shit, kid. I know who you are, and I think what you’re trying to do is admirable,” Sergeant Barnes continued.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about; I’m gonna call the cops,” BT maintained like a linebacker.

Sarge huffed.

“Go ahead,” he said, “See what they’ll do. If you even have a phone, that is.”

BT’s jaw worked. Sergeant Barnes eased his posture and gave BT a thorough once-over.

“Younger than I expected, but that’s never a bad thing,” he observed. “Exactly how old are you, Blindspot?”

BT answered him in Mandarin and Sergeant Barnes’s eyebrows shot up.

“You kiss your mama with that mouth?” he asked.

BT sneered at him.

“Sammy?”

The breath Ganke had been holding abandoned him.

Standing behind them all on the pavement was a tall man with bright red hair. He had a gray backpack slung over his shoulder, and in his left hand was a white stick.

His jawline was impossibly heroic and unspeakably familiar.

Ganke could have _screamed_.

That was Daredevil. _The_ Daredevil. The one. The only. The original.

He wore dark red glasses that hid his eyes and his knuckles were swollen and disgusting on the handle of his stick; the whole side of his right arm, where it peeked out from the orange zip-up hoodie he was wearing, looked like it had had been exfoliated with crocodile skin.

“Matt?” BT gasped.

“Ah, it is you, then,” Daredevil said in a surprisingly pleasant baritone. “I came as soon as Foggy told me. Caught the first red-eye out. Are you okay?”

He held out a hand and BT immediately dipped out from between Ganke, Miles, and Sergeant Barnes to catch ahold of it.

“I’m fine,” BT said, turning slightly to stare pointedly at Sergeant Barnes. “We just ran into an old client of yours.”

“An old client?” Daredevil repeated. “Well, you’re in the right neighborhood. I called your phone, but you didn’t answer? Did you lose it?”

BT lifted his chin at Sergeant Barnes as though he was daring him to speak.

“It got crushed in the car accident,” he said smoothly. “I’m working on getting a new one.”

“Ah, yes. That’s good then,” DD said. “Hm? Are there others here?”

Sergeant Barnes’s jaw hardened.

“Murdock,” he said.

Daredevil perked right up. His eyebrows were slightly darker than the rest of his hair.

“Sergeant?” he asked. “Now, you’re a surprise. You’re out a ways from home, aren’t you?”

Ganke thought that if it weren’t for social convention, Sergeant Barnes would have grabbed BT’s arm and pulled him right out of Daredevil’s grip there and then, but alas. They were standing in the middle of the street and moving suddenly in the presence of a blind dude was guaranteed to get someone’s attention.

“Yeah, well, you know. Steve loves to shoot the shit with your husband, couldn’t resist when he heard he was in town for a visit,” Sergeant Barnes grated out instead.

Daredevil smiled wide. His teeth were perfectly white and perfectly even, even if there was a split in his lower lip that looked angry.

Ganke couldn’t believe he was thinking this but like, Daredevil _kind of_ looked like a skinny, ginger Totoro.

“They are very cute together,” DD carried on saying to Sergeant Barnes affectionately, then he stiffened a little in mock-surprise. “Oh, how rude of me. You must have just met Samuel. My apologies, did he introduce himself? Sam’s our new paralegal—I’m sure Foggy told you. He’s the best thing that’s happened to us since Kirsten. He’s like a son to me, really.”

Daredevil curled an arm around Blindspot’s shoulder until BT came in close enough for it to hang there loosely. BT pressed ever so slightly back into the touch and stared straight into Sergeant Barnes’s eyes. Sergeant Barnes lifted his chin.

“I see,” he said. “I take it you two’re boxing buddies?”

“Alas,” DD said. “I try, but he never wants to come with me to the gym.”

“I’m busy, Bossman,” BT said evenly.

“I know, I know. But an old man can hope,” DD sighed, “Anyways, Sergeant, I’m afraid I literally just got off a plane. I feel about a stale as a Sunday’s bread. Sam, hon, do you think you could give me a hand back to Karen’s place?”

“Or course,” BT said.

“So polite, huh, Sarge? They don’t make ‘em like this one anymore, I’ll tell you. We’ll be off then?”

“Sure thing, Boss, just a moment,” BT said.

He pulled away from Daredevil’s arm and stooped low to pick up what Ganke realized was one of his contacts from where it was laying right next to Sergeant Barnes’s foot.

“It was nice meeting you, sir. Thank you for your service,” BT said when he came back up.

He held out of his arm for Daredevil to take ahold of, and DD did without needing to be asked.

His smile was out of this world. Almost threatening.

“Bye now,” he said.

And then he and BT turned away and didn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> five times. Count them. Five times I rewrote this chapter.


	9. stand the ages

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What’re you smiling about? It’s creepy.”

“I swear to _god_ , Steven.”

Cap motioned for Miles and Ganke to stand aside, he’d handle this.

“Don’t even try to convince me otherwise.”

Cap rolled his eyes.

“I—” he started.

“I just said don’t fuckin’ try—I’m tellin’ you. I’m tellin’ alla youse, just like I’ve been tellin’ alla youse for the last _ten goddamn years_ —”

“Bucky—”

“That motherfucker is Daredevil. He’s Daredevil and that’s it. That’s done.”

Cap sighed and deflated. Miles hid his giggles in his hands as Cap came forward to tenderly hold Sergeant Barnes’s scratchy face between two palms.

“Darling,” he said.

“No. No, don’t you even start with the ‘darling’s, I know what I know and what I know is—”

“Light of my life,” Cap carried on. “Star of my sky, pain of my ass—”

“Steve, _listen_ to me.”

“You’re paranoid,” Cap said lovingly, smoothing one of his thumbs back and forth on Sergeant Barnes’s cheek. “So paranoid. And so, _so_ stubborn. It’s okay, though. I love you despite this and the time you tried to drown me under a helicarrier—”

“That wasn’t my fault,” Sergeant Barnes snapped. “And is also so far from the point I’d have to climb a goddamn phone pole to even catch a glimpse—"

“ _I don’t care, James Buchanan_ ,” Cap said, terrifyingly serious.

Sergeant Barnes shut up and moved his jaw so slowly that a muscle in it twitched.

“I know you don’t care,” he growled. “You never fuckin’ cared and I don’t _understand_ —”

“You’re not this stupid, I know you’re not this stupid,” Cap just about threatened back. “You want to know why? You really want to know?”

“Yeah, actually. I would, your _highness_ , if you’d do us all the favor and get off your fuckin’ unicorn to share with the class that would actually alleviate the last _ten goddamn years_ of stress I’ve been havin’.”

Cap pulled away from Sergeant Barnes and pressed the pads of his fingers to his forehead as he took two big, steadying breaths. In and out. In and out. His chest blew up a good 25% bigger.

“I don’t care,” Cap said carefully. “Because it _behooves_ us—me, you, and Sam—to have a lawyer—a set of lawyers, actually—who understand intimately what it’s like to be a fat-headed, self-sacrificing, relentlessly overworked _lug_ who can’t catch a goddamn break because opportunity came crashing out of the woodwork when they were 25 years young and stupid. I don’t care because Fogs took a swing at the Punisher’s trial, fucked it up and missed, then decided that he was willing to take another swing on the likes of _your ass_ , Buck. Franklin Nelson is the reason that I’m talkin’ to you here and not through two feet of metal and plexiglass, and I for one _don’t give a shit_ if his dearest, darlin’ smiley-faced husband is or isn’t the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Those aren’t my secrets. That ain’t my burden. That’s on Fogs. And if he fights to keep the likes of us in the black so that he can keep his boy safe when it comes to it, then what the actual fuck does it matter what said pretty boy does in the meantime?”

Damn, man.

Imagine having your own personal Cap-speech.

Imagine having it delivered in an unfiltered Brooklyn accent, lined with irritation and a vague sense of disappointment in you not seeing the bigger picture.

Even Sarge didn’t have a comeback at the ready.

“But? The kid?” he tried.

Cap huffed a laughing sound that wasn’t a laugh but wasn’t quite mean enough to be a scoff.

“Buck,” he said. “If Murdock is the Devil and the Devil is Murdock, then we both know that he’s not some unfeeling shadow-creature in fetish gear. Murdock defended this place night and day, then left this city for Nelson. He looked after Peter when the rest of us couldn’t. He’s not gonna treat that kid like shit. The Devil doesn’t stand for that in his own community. And if even if he did start to stray, you’re tellin’ me that Nelson would let it happen right under his nose—is that what you think of the guy? Really?”

Miles and Ganke turned to Sergeant Barnes for the rebuttal.

He couldn’t possibly have one, right? Cap’s fleet of ships was watertight. He mopped and polished every one of those decks himself. 

Sergeant Barnes opened, then shut his mouth.

“Don’t like secrets,” he admitted after a moment.

Cap laughed out loud this time.

“We can’t know everything, Buck,” he said. “But that’s a not a me-and-you problem. That’s a problem for you to deal with, with your therapist.”

Sergeant Barnes’s eyes narrowed.

“I don’t _like_ my therapist,” he said.

“I don’t know what you’re on about, Dyta is an absolute doll,” Cap said.

Sergeant Barnes’s lip curled. Cap’s own lips smirked back at him, then dropped.

“I don’t care,” he said much more soberly. “Really, I don’t. Nelson is my friend, and I’ve trusted him with things that I value more than my own life and he’s never let me down, Buck. If not for Murdock, drop it for him. For me. For this. I don’t have so many friends like that anymore.”

Wh—

Wait? Really?

Sergeant Barnes took in a deep breath and sighed it out.

“Fine,” he said. “For now.”

Cap smiled.

“Thank you,” he said. “Now, shall we escort these young and impressionable youths home?”

Superheroes were amazing.

Vigilantes were amazing.

It was unreal to walk next to Miles on the way home from Cap’s place this time and to actually feel like he himself, Ganke Lee was a part of that larger culture.

The last 24 hours had just proved it.

“What’re you smiling about? It’s creepy.”

Shut up, dude, Ganke was having a good day. Don’t ruin it.

“No, it’s my job. It’s my sacred duty. _Talk_.”

Miles, they weren’t six. The finger guns were not effective anymore.

“ _Talk_.”

Ugh. Alright, whatever.

“Daredevil’s so cool,” Ganke said. “He came in right at the perfect moment, like wham-bam, here’s a new life-crisis for you to deal with.”

“Ah. Yeah, he does that. He’s fun,” Miles agreed, coming back to Ganke’s side to walk with him like a real person again. “He’s legit also a lot nicer than he looks, but only to one in every ten people—or that’s what Wade says anyways. Spidey says that it’s more like one in every fifty, but the odds go up if you’re older than 70.”

“He likes old people?” Ganke asked.

“He thinks they’re hilarious. He keeps telling Wade that he’ll consider starting to like him when he’s 84 and not a day before.”

That was pretty funny.

“Gankeeeeeee. That’s not it, though, I know it. Don’t play. I know how your brain works.”

Alright, alright, whatever.

“I was just thinking about Ned,” Ganke admitted. “And Foggy. And Cap. And how like—everyone is best friends. Like, they’re all best friends with their superpeople, and like, I dunno, I was just thinking how good that is. How everyone’s got someone to keep them on the straight and narrow.”

Miles didn’t say anything. They kept on walking.

“I want to make sure that I’m there for you like that,” Ganke said. “You know, if you go rogue or something, I’ll be able to rein you in. Or if you get hurt or get all twisted up or whatever, I want to be like those guys but for you.”

Miles still didn’t say anything. It was getting a little awkward. Ganke was bearing his heart, here, man.

“I guess it’s like this: if I can’t be the hero myself—which obviously, I can’t be, don’t even start—then maybe me helping you is a way for me to help other people,” he tried.

Miles finally looked up at him with super shiny eyes.

“You’ll be my Cap?” he asked.

Uh, duh? That was literally what he’d just been saying, dude.

“Maybe not your Cap, Cap’s too nice. I dunno about your Foggy either, he’s kinda weird. But I’ll be your Ned. He’s like a good mix of cool and nerdy, which, let’s be real, is _way_ more my bag than yours so—”

HNG.

Miles.

Miles, buddy—people need to breathe. Humans need to breathe. Lung need to inflate in order to transfer oxygen to the—

Oh thank god— _air_.

Miles sniffed and wrapped his arms around himself.

“We’ll be a legacy,” he said.

…We?

“Yeah. Us.”

Huh.

Okay.

Yeah, okay.


	10. epilogue

**BT:** EVERYONE YOUR ATTENTION PLS

 **S2:** wow look who’s back with a new phone

 **S3:** hey!! You’re okay!!

 **BT:** **[link] [link]**

 **BT:** y’all are reading this now. it is required for the next class session. we will be discussing it, so please do it all immediately and jot down notes and questions for seminar thank you good bye

 **S2:** fuck you

 **S3:** sorry which one is the required reading? The comic or the 200+ page novel?

 **BT:** **which do you think, louis?**

 **SM:** I’m having flashbacks 🎶 oh grad school my grad school

 **BT:** then have flashforwards. No excuses. Do the reading parker

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : I can’t read

 **BT:** that sounds like a you-problem

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : I can’t read that

 **D2:** don’t worry wade they’re on TAPE

 **S2:** Dave you are not possibly that old

 **D2:** I am!! Mildly!! Dyslexic!!

 **S2:** ADSJASDFASJD FUCK IM SO SORRY I DIDN’T MEAN IT LIKE THAT omg

 **S3:** good to know 👍🏾

 **DD:** I have read the required material

 **BT:** I know teach

 **DD:** I’ve taken notes

 **DD: [voice message]** I have a schedule if anyone would like to study with me. If you come you have to bring your own flashcards

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : Oh I’ll bring the flash

 **SM:** ASDASDFASDFSdf Bring your tits Wade

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : don’t worry, boo, I’ve always got ‘em on me

 **SM:** Prof I can’t study, Wade’s got his tits out

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : Throw me out of class I dare you

 **DD:** Does this mean you do not want to study?

 **S2:** no red no one wants to join your study group

 **DD:** 😥

 **BT:** I’ll study with you sensei it’s okay I appreciate you

 **DD: [voice message]** No I’m not hosting it anymore. You people don’t appreciate my hard work and dedication. Foggy will do it with me.

 **SM:** nerds

 **DD:** Kirsten too she got Summa Cum Laude, she’ll understand.

 **S2:** haha

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : nice

 **SM:** it means you got stupid high grades you morons. Like straight As

 **S2:** oh

 **S3:** I got Magna ❤

 **SM:** Same

 **D2:** I got a diploma!

 **S3:** we’re very proud of you still dave ❤

 **D2:** thanks my dad isn’t 💖

 **DD:** Kirsten is truly the only one that understands me

 **DD:** foggy pretends to, but he doesn’t count. he did coke while everyone else studied

 **S2:** OH MY GOD

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : red please tell us how that makes you feel

 **DD:** it’s not fair and it doesn’t matter and I will prove it

 **BT:** I have literally never seen this guy more ready to take a test y’all I may actually have to write one now or he’s gonna cry

 **SM:** can I take it credit/no credit?

 **BT:** depends. do you want me to come over?

 **SM:** …perhaps

 **BT:** better study kid

 **SM:** For FUCK’S sake. Matt where are you? Also I had to change your phone name from Elektra Natchios and that was WILD man why not just borrow one of Wade’s old phones?

 **DD:** You will study with me?

 **SM:** are you gonna go full nerd right now?

 **DD:** yes

 **SM:** god help me

 **DD:** Yes

 **DD:** Foggy says he will send you a pin

 **DD: [voice message]** but only if I agree to the Brixton building, which is blackmail and slander. It’s like he doesn’t understand that my feud with Mrs. Brixton has not ended simply because her bastard son has taken over the management of this place.

 **S2:** Red comes home to nyc for 45 min, saves BT from the Winter Soldier, sets up a study group, and reignites a bloodfeud with a 90yo woman in a nightie.

 **DD:** what can I say, my dear?

 **DD:** I graduated Summa

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : you graduated cum

 **DD:** all honors are cum you shithead cum is latin for with

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : Oh I bet it is

 **BT:** Old men shut up and get to reading. I have a monkey king cosplay to assemble. Peace, love, and rock ‘n roll, y’all. See you on test day.

 **D2:** **✌**

 **S3:** **✌🏾**

 **S2:** ✌🏽

 **SM:** Sam wait just clarifying we have to read both the comic and the book?

 **SM:** wait come back I wasn’t done I have questions about the syllabus

 **SM:** Saaaaaaaaaaam

 **DD:** … **[link]**

 **SM:** sigh

 **SM:** thanks Matt

 **DD:** bring your own damn flashcards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there we have it.
> 
> Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting. I love, love, love hearing what you think and the comments really help shape the work and encourage me to finish these bigger pieces. Thanks so much for all of the well wishing, too. You guys are darling, lovely, and I'm keeping you. 
> 
> If you want more works about Blindspot/Sam Chung you might have a wee look at my **Blindspot and the Ordeal of Being Known**. I also periodically do art for my various series at **https://deniigi.tumblr.com/tagged/matt's%20art**
> 
> Thanks again for reading, y'all! I'll catch you hopefully soon with another installment for this series ❤

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [model-scale, dot matrix nightmare](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27388291) by [Elkian (SuperImposed)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperImposed/pseuds/Elkian)




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